UPLAND SHOOTING. 
127 
mother carries them to it, one by one, in her bill, holding them 
so as not to injure their yet tender frames. 
“ Those which breed in Maine, New Brunswick, and Nova 
Scotia, move southward as soon as the frosts commence, and 
none are known to spend the winter so far North. I have been 
much surprised to find Wilson speaking of the Wood Ducks 
as a species of which more than five or six individuals are 
seldom seen together. A would-be naturalist in America, who 
has had better opportunities of knowing its habits than the 
admired author of the 4 American Ornithology,’ repeats the 
same error; and I am told, believes that all his statements are 
considered true. For my own part, I have seen hundreds in a 
single flock, and have known fifteen to be killed by a single 
shot. They, however, raise only one brood in the course of 
the season, unless their eggs or young are destroyed. In this 
case the female soon finds means of recalling her mate from the 
flock which he has joined.”— Audubon’s Birds of America . 
The discrepant statements, alluded to in the last paragraph, 
concerning the gregarious habits of the Wood Duck, may be 
probably accounted for by the difference of the bird’s manners 
in different localities. I have never myself seen above eight or 
nine of these birds together, and I presume that along the 
Atlantic seaboard, they are rarely seen in greater numbers. 
On the Great Lakes, and in the unbounded solitudes of the 
West, they doubtless congregate, as do many other species, in 
vast flocks. 
There is nothing which it behoves the observer of natural 
history more to guard against than a tendency to convert local 
or accidental peculiarities of individuals into settled habits of 
species. All wild animals appear to accommodate themselves 
with infinite facility to circumstances, and to adapt their man¬ 
ners to the necessities of the regions in which they chance to 
be thrown, more readily than is generally suspected. In one 
place, a species is solitary ; in another, gregarious in its cus¬ 
toms—here it is migratory, there domestic ; and to positive and 
YOL. I. 11 
