February, 1915 
HOUSE AND GARDEN 
89 
A wedge of honking scoters migrating from the morasses of the north. Their nesting habits are peculiar — the female buries her eggs in the loam beneath a tangle 
of vines and grass until all are laid, then she uncovers them, builds a nest, and lines it with down picked from her breast 
north to the Arctic Sea, and even the lands and islands further 
north; likewise the marshy portions of Alaska. Around Hud¬ 
son’s Bay and at the deltas of the Arctic rivers are notable breed¬ 
ing areas of marsh and muskeg. Not all of the great area, by any 
means, is breeding ground, for much of it is forested or rocky and 
unsuitable for ducks and geese. But scattered over it are locali¬ 
ties enough of the right sort to produce an enormous number of 
fowl. 
On my first exploration in North Dakota I started out on a 
six-weeks’ tour with guide, 
double rig and camp outfit. Not 
everywhere, by any means, did 
we see fowl. Some days we 
drove forty miles over the dry, 
perfectly flat prairie; some¬ 
times on roads, again on mere 
trails through the short, dry 
prairie grass, without meeting a 
duck. Then we would see, per¬ 
haps, a series of shallow, 
marshy pools, with grass or 
rushes growing from the water. 
There we pitched our tent and 
spent the night. The water was 
usually about knee-deep. As I 
beat through the grass at the 
edge or waded out to the clumps 
or areas of rushes, a female 
duck would flutter from the 
tangle at my feet and reveal her 
carefully concealed, down-lined 
nest and in it a hatful of eggs, usually from eight to eleven. 
On that first jaunt, the first duck’s nest that I discovered was 
a pintail's, by the shore of such a pool, or “slough,” as it is called. 
The second nest was revealed a few moments later, when I waded 
out toward some rushes, and a big gray canvasback sprang from 
ber “ark of bulrushes” and went fluttering over the water. In 
another slough a few days later I saw eleven species of wild 
ducks swimming in pairs; and I was able to locate many of their 
nests in the slough or in the prairie grass adjoining. 
Other favorite breeding loca¬ 
tions in such regions are dry 
islands in the larger lakes ; some¬ 
times partly stony, overgrown 
with weeds, grass and low 
bushes. Years ago I happened 
upon a group of small islets of 
this character, where, on the 
landing of our party from a 
boat, dozens of ducks fluttered 
off their nests, and even some 
wild Canadian geese. 
Another remarkable island 
was in a large lake in Saskatche¬ 
wan. This was a grassy island 
about half a mile long, and the 
grass was full of nesting ducks. 
One day we flushed sixty of 
them from their nests. Next 
year one of my party went there 
with another ornithologist to 
(Continued on page 115) 
