GAME BIRDS OF MISCOU ISLAND. 
557 
arrival, but they arrive during the first two weeks in September, 
the blue-winged always being much more numerous than the 
green-winged. It is a curious fact that I have never seen a 
specimen either of the teals, pintails or whistlers, which showed 
the head-plumage characteristic of the adult male. That there 
should not have been an adult male in all these years is most 
unlikely, and the explanation must be, I think, that the birds had 
not fully recovered their full plumage after moulting. We have 
yet much to learn of the changes in the plumage of birds. 
Pintails rarely make their appearance before the 15th of Sep- 
tember, arriving with or a little after the northern dusky ducks, 
and flying, sometimes in flocks by themselves, but often mingled 
with the dusky ducks. By the end of September or early in 
October, they have disappeared. I have never known them to 
breed on the island, and have never seen one in August. 
Whistlers are the latest of all the ducks to arrive, usually 
about the 20th of September, and they occasionally appear in 
large flocks. I have never known them to breed on the island, 
but formerly, I am told, they did so, and the resident gunners 
are familiar with the fact that they nest in trees and call them 
“wood-ducks.” 
The story of the geese on Miscou, as I have received it fr^m 
Mr. Charles Wilson, one of the oldest residents, is rather interest- 
ing. Eighty or more years ago, geese bred upon “the moss” in 
large numbers, and it was the custom of the Micmac Indians to 
visit the island during the moulting season and destroy large 
numbers of them with clubs when they were unable to fly. 
After one such raid, more determined than usual, the geese as a 
body abandoned the island for a breeding ground, and since then 
only an odd pair have now and then raised a “clutch” here. 
I have seen a few such clutches, and some ten years ago found 
several of the broken eggs in the northwest corner of “the moss” 
The arrival of the geese from the north is very uncertain. I have 
found as many as one hundred and fifty on the island in August, 
and in other years not a goose is seen before September 10th, 
from which date they are continually seen making the island from 
the sea and gather in constantly increasing numbers to remain 
