324 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[Nov. 14, 1889. 



WOODCOCK IN TOWN." 



~T>ROOKLYN,N. Y., Nov. 9.— Editor Forest and Stream: 

 JD The note of " S. E," in your issue of this week, re- 

 lating the capturing of a woodcock on the stoop of his 

 Brooklyn residence, prompts me to send you these notes. 

 One Sunday morning in December, 1885, 1 was awakened 

 by my twelve-year-old brother, who asked me with con- 

 siderable excitement for the name of a bird which his 

 older brother (fourteen years old) had caught the day 

 before in the street' a short distance from the house. 

 "Kind of a round plump bird, brown, with short tail, 

 awful long bill, and big round eyes." I at once thought 

 it was a woodcock. On going down-stairs, sure enough 

 there they had, in an old squirrel cage, as fine a big 

 woodcock as I ever saw and in splendid feather, the darker 

 blotches of feathers showing clear and distinct from the 

 lighter color. My brother gave an account of the capture 

 as follows: "I was playing in the street yesterday after- 

 noon with some other boys, when I saw a large bird fly 

 across the street and light in the gutter. I thought it 

 was a quail and ran over toward it, when it flew again 

 about half a block, and again lit in the gutter. When it 

 flew the second time I ran after it, for I thought it acted 

 queer, and when it lit I was close to it and caught it just 

 as a lady was also stooping to catch it; and I brought it 

 home and put it in the cage." 



This woodcock had one of its legs injured (I think by a 

 shot) at the joint of leg and thigh. It looked as though 

 a cord had been cut and the bone partly splintered, and 

 a warty or semi-bone growth of say fin. or lin. in cir- 

 cumference had formed at the fracture. When picked 

 up in the street the bird had a drop of blood iu the end 

 of its bill; but my brother thinks this was caused by hit- 

 ting its bill against the cobbles in the street, as he says 

 he noticed each time the bird lit it " pitched forward." 

 The injured leg itself was not drawn up much, but the 

 toes of that foot were doubled under, and of course the 

 bird hobbled when it moved about. It was very fearless 

 and did not seem to mind being taken in our hands, and 

 only struggled when we examined its injured leg. As it 

 was late in the season and the swamps and feeding 

 grounds were frozen up, we did not think it possible for 

 the bird to live, and apparently it was not strong enough 

 to fly, so we killed it and sent it to a sick relative. 



About seven years ago I was standing on the extreme 

 forward deck of a Fulton ferry boat in Brooklyn at about 

 7:30 A. M., when I was surprised to see a woodcock come 

 diagonally across the Brooklyn Bridge yard, fly over the 

 end of the boat (which was crowded and just about to 

 start for New York), and about 60 or 75yds. out over the 

 river turn and return over almost exactly the same 

 course, passing not more than 10ft. above my head and 

 disappearing. 



A young friend of mine lived five years ago in a small 

 frame house on a corner lot of about 100x100, the house 

 being in the corner of the lot furthest from the streets; 

 and in the front yard there were two cherry trees, some 

 gooseberry bushes, flowers, etc. On one street a line of 

 horse cars runs about once in five minutes. Early one 

 morning my friend and his father were much surprised 

 to see a large woodcock stalking around as if feeling per- 

 fectly at home. My friend rushed into the house for his 

 gun, but when he came out the woodcock had flown. 



The first and third of these incidents happened in 

 different parts of the most built up and populous part of 

 the Twenty-third Ward in this city. 



How shall we account for the presence of so shy a bird 

 as a woodcock in the streets and private yard's of the 

 third city of the United States— a city of say 600,000 

 people? * Duplex. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



On the 6th inst., while several members of the Brook- 

 lyn Athletic Association were playing lawn tennis on 

 their grounds, corner of DeKalb and Classon avenues, 

 their attention was attracted by the movements of a cat 

 to (what was to them) a strange bird. It could fly but a 

 short distance, and was secured by Mr. Walter Brown 

 with his tennis racket. It proved to be a fine female 

 specimen of woodcock. This is probably a first on record 

 for the racket as a weapon for killing woodcock. It had 

 doubtless injured itself in its flight against the wire net- 

 ting that surrounds the grounds. H. J. Gr. 



Beookltn, N. Y., Nov. 9. 



AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGISTS' UNION. 



''TTHE Union began its annual session in this city at the 

 J- American Museum of Natural History Tuesday 

 The active members in attendance were: Prof. J. A. 

 Allen, of the American Museum of Natural History, 

 President, and one of the most distinguished ornitholo- 

 gist in the country ; Dr. Elliott Coues and Robert Ridg- 

 way, both of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, 

 Vice-Presidents; Dr. C. Hart Merriam, Chief of the Di- 

 vision of Ornithology and Mammalogy in the Department 

 of Agriculture, Secretary; Wm. Dutcher, of this city, 

 Treasurer; Wm. Brewster, of Cambridge, Mass., Charles 

 B, Cory, of Boston, Mass., Daniel G. Elliott, of New 

 York, Members of the Council; Charles F. Batchelder, of 

 Cambridge, Mass., Frank M. Chapman, of New York. 

 Jonathan D wight, Jr., of New York, Col. N. S. Goss, of 

 Topeka, Kan., State Ornithologists; Dr. Edgar A. Mearus, 

 United States Army, of Fort Snelling, Minnesota; John 

 H. Sage, of Portland, Conn.; Geo. B. Sennett, of the 

 American Museum of Natural Historv; Dr. Robert Shu- 

 feldt, United Stages Army, of Fort Wingate, New Mexico, 

 and Gurdon Trumbull, of Hartford, Conn. Among the 

 associate members present were Leverett M. Loomis, of 

 Chester, S. C; S. Lowell Elliott, of Brooklyn, and L. H. 

 West, of Roslyn. 



The following officers were elected: Pres., J. A. Allen, 

 of New York; Vice-Pres., Elliott Coues and Robert 

 Ridgway, of Washington; Sec, John H. Sage, of Port- 

 land, Conn.; Treas., William Dutcher, of New York; 

 Members of the Council, William Brewster, Charles B 

 Cory, Daniel G. Elliott, Henry W. Henshaw, George N. 

 Lawrence, C. Hart Merriam and Leonhard Slejneger. A 

 number of interesting papers were read yesterday. A 

 report of the meeting will be given next week. 



The Chocolate- Colored Skunk.— We had not fully 

 understood Mr. True's description of the color of the 

 skunk, noticed in our columns Nov. 7. The white ares 

 are present as in the normal state of coloration; it was 

 only the black that was replaced by chocolate in the 

 Morantown specimen; the white tip and lateral stripes 

 remain unchanged. 



'%me §ng mtd %m\. 



CANVASBACK DUCKS. 



MUCH has been written of recent dates to your valu- 

 able paper about the canvasback duck of Havre 

 de Grace, and the canvasback of Currituck and other 

 waters. I have just read a long and interesting article 

 in the New York Herald, by Mr. John Chamberlain, the 

 great Washington epicure. Mr. Chamberlain knows what 

 to do with a duck, when he gets him by the neck. I 

 have no doubt — in fact I feel confident — that a good fat 

 canvasback, served according to directions, would not be 

 bad to take, if there was not over one at each time, 

 but when Mr. Chamberlain and all the other writers we 

 have read recently on this subject tell us that the canvas- 

 back duck from Havre de Grace is superior to the canvas- 

 back of Currituck and Back Bay, he and they are mis- 

 taken, and very much mistaken too. I give the follow- 

 ing facts as a foundation for my assertion: 



First — The duck is one and the same in every particu- 

 lar. The best gunner in the United States, with the 

 finest microscope, could not detect any difference in 

 color, shape or size. 



Second — The waters at Havre de Grace, Currituck 

 Sound and Back Bay are exactly of the same flavor, a 

 little too brackish to be palatable. 



Third — Wild celery is what a canvasback lives on, if it 

 is to be had; but if not he will eat any kind of duck food 

 or even mussels, small oysters or minnows. They do not, 

 as Mr. Chamberlain writes, pine away and die of starva- 

 tion if they happen by mistake or over-hunger to drop 

 into a stream where there is no celery, which gives them 

 the delicious flavor, of course; when a canvasback is shot 

 in salt water, he is no better than a white-winged coot, 

 except not quite so tough ; and as there is just as much 

 or more celery at Currituck and Back Bay, I claim that 

 the ducks are just as good. 



Canvasback ducks and redheads are perhaps the greatest 

 birds for migrating in America. One day they are at 

 Havre de Grace, the next at Currituck, and in two days* 

 back to Havre de Grace. It is an understood fact that 

 these birds go or come a distance of 200 or 000 mOes in a 

 night's time; and often it has been my experience and 

 every other duck hunter's, too, that to-day there will be 

 thousands and thousands of canvasbacks and redheads in 

 the Bay or Sound in which we are shooting, and to-morrow 

 hardly a bird is to be seen; they are all gone. Perhaps 

 they will return the next day, but they generally stay 

 two to four days, when they are as plenty as ever. We 

 often see them just as the sun sets in the fall, when they 

 have been shot at hard all day, arrive in large flocks and 

 start north. They go direct to Havre de Grace; perhaps 

 a few will drop in the James River; and they go back and 

 forth all winter or until it gets too cold at Havre de Grace. 

 Still we are told that they are not the same ducks, and 

 that there is no comparison. 



It was my happy fortune, a few days ago, to sail up to 

 Baltimore on the good ship Carolina with two of Havre 

 de Grace's famous shots, who spent several winters at Cur- 

 rituck and in Back Bay some 3 r ears ago: in fact, Jake Pop- 

 lar and his brother John axe considered at Havre de Grace 

 two of the finest shots in America. Jake has killed in 

 Back Bay 325 canvasbacks in one day's shooting. They 

 say the only difference between Havre de Grace and 

 Back Bay ducks is that at Havre de Grace they don't kill 

 so many birds, and so have more time to sponge them off 

 and keep them looking nice and clean. This, my reader, 

 is the only diffrence between a Havre de Grace, Md , can- 

 vasback and a canvasback from Currituck Sound, North 

 Carolina. 



But to prove my sincerity in the matter I will wager 

 $100 that I can take twenty canvasbacks from each place, 

 mix them up together, mark them so that a referee may 

 know, to decide the matter, and I will bet there is not a 

 man in the United States who can tell the difference. 



To prove what I say about a canvasback preferring 

 mussels, small oysters and minnows to starvation, I will 

 relate some little incidents as they recur to my memory. 

 Two winters ago I bought quite a. lot of ducks at More- 

 head City, N. C. , and on one occasion when the weather 

 was very cold and all the waters at Currituck were frozen 

 up solid, I received from my agent a fine lot of canvas- 

 backs. I think they were decidedly the largest and fat- 

 test I have ever seen. The next day some of my friends 

 from Long Island, N. Y., sat down to my table to help 

 me destroy these delicious birds. But alas! my carver 

 had hardly broken the skin, when the scent of mussels 

 filled the room. Fortunately my cook had a good roast 

 ready or we should have had no dinner that day, for we 

 could not eat the ducks. There is no celery at More- 

 head, for the water is very salt. 



Capt. Eugene Ballence, who formerly ran the steamers 

 Cygnet and Bonito to Currituck Sound, well known by 

 all sportsmen who ever visited those waters to be a man 

 of sound sense and veracity, had the same experience in 

 the Albemarle Sound, at the south end of Roanoke 

 Island. He awoke one very cold morning and found 

 what he had never seen there before, thousands and 

 thousands of canvasbacks swimming around the shore. 

 They seemed happy, and were feeding from the bottom 

 at a lively rate. He took out his gun, and in a short time 

 there were several in the hands of the cook. Although 

 the Captain says he had eaten nothing but salt fish and 

 griddle cakes for a month, he could not go the canvas- 

 backs. He examined their crops and found them full of 

 mussels and minnows. 



While in Baltimore a few days since I was told by 

 Baltimore's greatest epicure, Mi - . Robt. Rennert, that one 

 of the finest pairs of canvasbacks he ever saw came from 

 Currituck Sound last winter. Mr. James Jones, of Nor- 

 folk, gave them to him; and I sold Mr. Jones the ducks. 



I was born on the banks of the river at Currituck about 

 thirty years ago; and I think it was next day — as well as 

 I remember — that they put a gun in my hands; and I 

 have been shooting ever since. I have shot all kinds of 

 ducks in this country, and a great many of them. I am 

 very fond of all kinds of game, and have eaten them in 

 every style — except as the English prefer them, rotten. 

 And I must say with all candor that T can cook a canvas- 

 back, redhead, and a widgeon or baldpate, and have 

 them carved and set before the greatest epicure in the 

 world, and I don't believe he can tell one from the other. 

 I have seen Messrs. James Gordon Bennett, George Pen- 

 neman and several of then friends try it at my table, and 

 they were completely at sea. Wild celery gives them the 



flavor, and it does not matter whether they come from 

 Havre de Grace, Currituck, Back Bay, Ohio, Texas, or 

 anywhere on the Pacific coast: if only you get them in a 

 stream where there is plenty of wild celery they are all 

 right; otherwise they are no better than other ducks. 



Game of all kinds is very plentiful at Currituck. I 

 think there are more ducks than we have had for ten 

 years. I attribute it to the passage of that new act of 

 the Legislature making it a penalty of $50 to shoot a duck 

 over decoys until Nov. 10 and after March 10. The pen- 

 alty for firing a rifle in Currituck Sound is $50, and $50 

 fine for shooting ducks for market before Nov. 10. 



J. B. White. 



MY FIRST CANVASBACK. 



A bemintscence of shell point. 



DURING the winter of 188- Boreas in our Northern 

 clime had lowered the column of mercury in the 

 Fahrenheit tubes to 10, 12 and 16 degrees below zero for 

 days and weeks together, when into our sanctum walked 

 W. R. A. with a challenge to seek a temporary abode in 

 a land of more etherial mildness, where we might snap 

 our fingers at his frigid majesty and vvarm our guns upon 

 the larger-winged game. Having enjoyed many rare 

 days' sport with him upon the high-flying upland plover, 

 the swift-flying quail, the devious-flying snipe, the erratic- 

 flying woodcock and the lordly ruffed grouse, it had long 

 been my ambition, as it had many times been his privi- 

 lege, to try conclusions with the seafowl of the coast. 

 The talk resulted in the almost immediate purchase of 

 tickets for the sunny South. 



Arriving in Norfolk before noon, we take the Virginia 

 Beach Railroad to the Princess Anne, in time for dinner: 

 thence along the beach toward North Carolina by such a 

 combination of quadrupeds, wheels, boards, chains and 

 ropes for power and vehicle, and with such a Jehu for 

 driver as wildest imagination never pictured. 



The dozen or fifteen miles from the hotel to our desti- 

 nation is a barren coast, evincing no sign of civilization 

 or lif e except about the stations of the U. S. Coast Guard, 

 which are some four or five miles apart. Hulks of old 

 wrecks and drift, an occasional fisherman's hut deserted, 

 now and then a disused windmill in the distance, its idle 

 arms outstretched as if in mute appeal from bygone times 

 to the present? eagles soaring in the air or perched upon 

 the telegraph poles of the life-saving service, are the only 

 companions of the trip, save the ceaseless roar and mur- 

 mur of ocean's billows as they sing their mournful dirge 

 as a fitting requiem over the graves of the many cast- 

 aways whose bones lie bleaching beneath the sands of the 

 shore, with only a broken spar to mark their last resting 

 places. 



Arrived at Little Island, Capt. Andrew's voice rings out 

 a cheery welcome to my friend, whose advent, though 

 unexpected, was none the less welcome, and whose gun 

 in these parts had many times previously rung out the 

 death knell of many a noble bird. We turn in early and 

 are soon lost in pleasant dreams. We seem hardly to 

 have been asleep at all when aroused from our slumbers 

 by the ringing voice of the Captain, "All hands, ahoy! 

 rousing nor'easter." 



"Aye, aye, sir," was the nautical answer of his land 

 lubber guests. 



A hasty toilet and breakfast, and soon the gunner, well 

 bundled in the bow and boatman at the oars, were quietly 

 making their way to Shell Point long before the faintest 

 glimmer of daybreak appeared on the eastern horizon. 

 Point reached, decoys put out. boat beached among the 

 cane, gunner and boatman in readiness in an exceedingly 

 comfortable blind, anxiously await in silence the advent 

 of the first callers. The dark rolling clouds had scarcely 

 begun to lift, giving evidence of daybreak, when the keen 

 and practical eye of Eb. discovered in the distance a pair 

 of ducks coming up wind. 



"Pair canvas, down, sir — mark south— don't shoot till 

 I tell you." Then began Eb.'s wonderful talk in purest 

 duck language. Down crouching, electric currents mak- 

 ing quick circuit of the system, realizing that the long 

 wished for moment of years was at hand, breathlessly 

 awaited their oncoming. Eb.'s whispered, "mark east" 

 indicates then: location, and peering between the cane 

 reeds of the .blind we see them swiftly flying into the 

 teeth of the wind and well out, as if to pass our decoys 

 in disgust, and my heart sinks as I see them pas3 us by, 

 but no! Eb.'s trained voice is too seductive for wisest 

 duck to resist. 



They wheel, and with a whispered "Mark north, get 

 ready," he continues to call more impassioned and earn- 

 est, and in less time than it takes to write it around 

 they sweep in a rectilinear line to our decoys, and with 

 an audible "Mark east, shoot," the gunner is on his feet 

 and the old reliable 10-bore Scott rings out the death- 

 knell of my first canvasback. He was coming with such 

 velocity that he fell stone dead in the water within two 

 feet of our blind, although shot at a distance of forty to 

 fifty yards. Duck number two wheeled about and stood 

 not upon the order of his going in a line directly away 

 from us, and swinging around upon him I failed to stop 

 the gun when it covered him, and so shooting to the right 

 scored a clean miss. 



"Well done, sir, well done; no gun could reach the last 

 one," were Eb.'s words of congratulation and flattery. 



Ah! clever soul, well knew I that I should bave killed 

 the second, but his kindly genial way lessened my cha- 

 grin and his words of flattery were as balm in the mo- 

 ment of disappointment. Thus was ushered in our duck- 

 ing experience, and many were the pleasant and success- 

 ful days put in with Eb. since — the memories of which 

 in the mellow light of receding months and years form 

 mental pictures surpassing those of the artist's most skill- 

 ful limning. 



Eb. V. Roe is now in the employ of the Currituck Club, 

 and the writer fully believes that every member will 

 testify that taken all in all, few equal if any excel Eb. in 

 all that goes to make up the art of duck shooting, and 

 the writer indulges the hope that it may be the pleasant 

 lot of the reader to fall in with as good a man and have 

 as good a time as he did on Shell Point, where he killed 

 his first canvasback. 



The territory referred to joins on the north the terri- 

 tory of the Ragged Island Club and comprises Little 

 Island, Shell Island, Beech Island, Long Island, etc., a ter- 

 ritory of several thousand acres, and is owned by the 

 heirs of Capt. Travis, in his lifetime of New York. The 

 property has been held under lease for some years past 

 by John L. Roper, of Norfolk, Va., and is still in charge 



