WAYS OF NATURE 



in the top of a tall yellow birch near the spring that 

 supplies my cabin with water. A bold climber 

 " shinned " up the fifty or sixty feet of rough tree- 

 trunk and looked in upon the eleven eggs. They 

 were beyond the reach of his arm, in a well-hke 

 cavity over three feet deep. How would the mother 

 duck get her young up out of that well and down 

 to the ground ? We watched, hoping to see her in 

 the act. But we did not. She may have done it at 

 night or very early in the morning. All we know is 

 that when Amasa one morning passed that way, 

 there sat eleven little tufts of black and yellow down 

 in the spring, with the mother duck near by. It was 

 a pretty sight. The feat of getting down from the 

 tree-top cradle had been safely effected, probably by 

 the young clambering up on the inside walls of the 

 cavity and then tumbling out into the air and com- 

 ing down gently like huge snowflakes. They are 

 mostly down, and why should they not fall with- 

 out any danger to hfe or limb ? The notion that 

 the mother duck takes the young one by one in her 

 beak and carries them to the creek is doubtless erro- 

 neous. Mr. William Brewster once saw the golden- 

 eye, whose habits of nesting are like those of the 

 wood duck, get its young from the nest to the water 

 in this manner: The mother bird ahghted in the 

 water under the nest, looked all around to see that 

 the coast was clear, and then gave a peculiar call. 

 Instantly the young shot out of the cavity that held 



