180 NY ROC A AMERICANA 



from the "blind" to the top of a sunken buoy several hundred yards out from shore. 

 Most of the flocks of Scaups, called here Blue-bills, alight in the middle of the pond. 

 The runner is pulled back and forth so as to impart a swimming motion to the flock 

 of wooden ones, and the diving ducks, whatever the species, are apt to notice this 

 and swim toward it. Then the wooden flock is pulled rapidly toward shore, the wild 

 ones following, until they are near enough to shoot at. This method works well with 

 the few Red-heads which we get here. They behave in a more nervous manner than 

 Scaups and are apt to follow a short distance, then fly up and come back again. If 

 the wooden decoys are kept ahead of them so that they never entirely reach them, 

 they "work" better. When the little flock approaches shore they get more and more 

 nervous, their necks are stuck straight up and their heads twisted about in an en- 

 quiring manner. Shallow water, especially if the bottom is bright and sandy, they 

 are fearful of and they will not often follow over such a course. Finally, when the 

 flock thinks it is high time to depart for safer waters, they leave the wooden blocks 

 and in their confusion are apt to pack very densely, affording a deadly opportunity, 

 which if it came often enough (which it never does here), would provide many a good 

 meal. The moving runner-line will not work, of course, in very weedy places as it gets 

 covered with snarled vegetation. 



Ducks that have been banded and some of them afterward shot, give us a good 

 idea of the mortality brought about by man in one season. At Bear River, Utah, 

 Wetmore banded 239 Red-heads a few years ago. Of these 51, or 21%, met their 

 fate at the hands of some shooter, which seems a high average. It is, in fact, higher 

 than for any other species which he was able to band except the Mallard. 



Behavior in Captivity. There are few records of the Red-head ever having 

 been kept in collections of live water-birds in Europe. It seems that it was shipped 

 abroad in a live state only in recent years. With us it is often kept, lives fairly well 

 for a moderate number of years, but seldom breeds. Probably no really good strain 

 of hand-raised stock has ever been produced and carried on. Certainly, wild-caught 

 adults or cripples very seldom nest, although they may live in an apparently healthy 

 state for three to five years. I have kept a goodly number from time to time. They 

 are much longer-lived than the Canvas-back under similar conditions, and doubtless 

 would do just as well as European Pochards. Like other diving ducks the male does 

 not usually go into a very perfect eclipse in confinement, and the onset of the summer 

 moult is delayed. 



I do not know who first bred the Red-head from captive specimens, but of the fol- 

 lowing I am sure, for I saw it myself. Sometime during the middle or late nineties 

 the late Mr. Wilton Lockwood, who had a splendid lot of water-fowl at South Or- 

 leans, Massachusetts, was rearing this and other ducks in considerable numbers. 

 On one visit I saw a fine lot of young Red-heads and remember that he fed them 



