250
Lake Umbagog.
Megalloway [sic] [Magalloway] River.
1897
Sept. [September] 15
(No 2)
them beyond any question. They behaved in the usual
manner lying close and skulking about under fallen
logs & tops. The place was very wet with long wiry grass
growing in the open spaces.
  We next turned into the meadow opposite (and a
little below) Pulpit Rock. It proved to be flooded
to the very edges of the woods. Near the upper end,
however, a belt of grass and bushes encircled a larger
pool with a floating island in the centre. Here we
found a flock of 22 Black Ducks & a single Wood
Duck. The former saw us & rose out of range but
a few minutes later we flushed the Wood Duck from
some grass & I fired my choked barrel at it as it
was going off. It came down to the water but
recovering rose above the bushes on the island & was
lost to sight behind them. Will felt sure that it
had dropped into the water on the further side &
had gone ashore. He quickly demonstrated the correctness
of this surmise by landing and driving out the bird
which I killed as soon as it got clear of the
bushes. The noise which we thus made started a
flock of ten more Wood Ducks from well back
among the stubs where there must have been a
pool of water that we could not see. Less than
half-an-hour later this flock returned as we were
over on our way up river & dropped back into the
head of the meadow. The water about the island
was literally covered with their feathers.
[margin]Wood Ducks
&
Black Ducks[/margin]
  We lunched at Pulpit Rock and then kept on.