268 NYROCA MARILA 



body of a Scaup inside one of these predaceous fish. The Goose-fish is known to take 

 Scoters, grebes, loons and other water birds. 



Food Value. If one reads far enough in the sportsman's literature one can find 

 plenty of recommendations for the flesh of even the poorest ducks. Such is the case 

 with the Scaup. The specimens which I have shot on the pond at Wenham, Massa- 

 chusetts, seemed to have come from the interior, for they had not fed on mollusks 

 and did not smell or taste rank. But these migrants are usually not fat and their flesh 

 is always comparatively dry and tasteless, and far inferior to that of most ducks. 

 Birds shot on the coast, both here and in Europe, especially old birds taken late in 

 the season, may be fat, but they are strong, rank and by no means delicate in tex- 

 ture. Very few writers have a good word to say for them, though they are, no doubt, 

 appreciated in localities where even Scoters are considered fit to eat, as on Cape 

 Cod, Massachusetts. There are, however, certain waters on our coast where the 

 Scaup is by no means to be despised. On the Chesapeake they enjoyed an excellent 

 reputation in the old days, if they were feeding with Red-heads and Canvas-backs 

 (E. J. Lewis, 1855), and on the fresh-water sounds farther south their flesh is excel- 

 lent. In Pamlico Sound, which is nearly salt water, they are considered about equal 

 to the Red-head, but I did not find them so myself. Shot on the same waters and 

 eating some of the same food they were, I thought, coarse and strong. 



Hunt. In America Scaups are shot almost entirely over wooden decoys, and as 

 there are few places where they fly across points or beaches the sportsman resorts 

 to sink-boxes and bush-blinds, floating or thrust into the mud, where a boat can be 

 concealed. In most of our northern Atlantic waters the battery-boat or sink-box is 

 forbidden by law, and in consequence the Scaup leads a life of almost uninterrupted 

 pleasure. 



This duck responds readily to tolling with a dog, in fact it was more easily enticed 

 to the shore by this method than either the Red-head or the Canvas-back. This 

 method, which was used in the Upper Chesapeake a hundred years ago, has long 

 since been given up. Giraud (1844) tells of decoying Scaup by having a dog trained 

 to swim between the ducks and the shore and also by waving a red handkerchief 

 every few seconds. 



The Indians used to take them with flight-nets set up in some of the narrow 

 places in Puget Sound, Washington, according to W. L. Dawson and Bowles (1909). 



They respond very well to a flock of wooden decoys pulled out into a lake on an 

 endless line and worked in to shore ahead of a swimming flock. They show every 

 evidence of curiosity and for no particular reason will often swim up close to a beach 

 upon which live Mallard decoys are swimming or playing, merely to "look things 

 over." 



