251
Lake Umbagog.
Megalloway River.
1897.
Sept. 15
(No 3)                
stopping to take a photograph every now & then. Will
landed opposite the mouth of Bear Brook and crossed
through the woods to the pond near Horse Shoe Bend.
In this pond he found a flock of seven Wood Ducks of
which he killed one.
[margin]Wood Ducks[/margin]
  As there was no hope of my being able to approach
the best feeding grounds in Bottle Brook Pond by land we
dragged the skiff across the bank and Will paddled
me around this pond. We had traversed two of the
"legs" without seeing anything save two Solitary Sandpipers
and were just entering the third & most northerly one
keeping close to the shore where a Black Duck swam
out from under a fallen spruce top and at once took
wing. I knocked her down easily enough but the
next instant made a most mortifying miss with
the second barrel at another Duck which rose with
a prodigous flutter from behind the top and made
off in the same direction that the first had taken.
The shots started three Whistlers from somewhere further
up in the cove. They came out by us within
good range but passed before I could get fresh
shells into the gun. These were all the Ducks that
we could find in this pond. The water was too
high for them and all the grass & aquatic plants 
seemed to have been killed. Indeed the whole
pond had an altered and ragged look and most
of the black alder bushes about its edges were
dead & dying. This change is possibly due to
the overflow of last spring which did not subside
at so early a date as usual.
[margin]Bottle Brook Pond[/margin]
[margin]Black Ducks[/margin]
[margin]Whistlers[/margin]
[margin]Pond much
changed &
disfigured.[/margin]