240
*
Lake Umbagog.
Outlet Marshes
1897.
Sept. 11
(No 3)
no instance, so far as I could make out, did they
join any of the birds that answered them. Each
bird, indeed, seemed to have chosen a feeding place
that was to its liking & to be merely carrying on
a conversation in duck language with its friends
in other parts of the flooded marsh.
[margin]*
Interesting
experience
with Black
Ducks.[/margin]
  This had gone on for some time when Will whispered
that some Ducks were coming up behind us.
Turning slowly I saw them about seventy yards
off directly in the middle of the pathway of
burnished silver cast over the rippling water by
the full moon which was perhaps an hour high
in the eastern sky. It was a picture I shall
not soon forget. One by one, to the number of a 
dozen or more, the stately long-necked birds crossed
this shining path and were at once lost to sight
in the obscurity that walled it in on both sides.
A few minutes later we followed them but before
we could get them again into the moonlight
they saw or heard us & rose with a prodigious
rush of wings. I sent a charge of shot after
them quite at random but without result. The
report did not seem to disturb any of the 
other Ducks for we heard them quacking and
splashing in several directions a minute or two
later and tried again to paddle up to some of 
them but without success.
  Two Great Blue Herons and a Solitary Sandpiper
flew about over the marshes while we were watching
or listening to the Ducks. 
[margin]Herons
Solitary S. [sandpiper][/margin]