July 27, 1912 
FOREST AND STREAM 
107 
The American Game Association’s Farm in Massachusetts 
By SYDNEY G. FISHER 
D URING the last week in June, I had to at¬ 
tend a meeting of the Board of Trustees 
of Trinity College at Hartford, and after 
telling the incoming freshmen to be good boys, 
study hard and not waste their time in sports 
and amusements, I started off for a day at the 
American Association’s New Game Farm, near 
South Carver, at the base of Cape Cod. 
It is a peculiar region, rolling, hilly, sandy 
and with very little fertility; but covered with a 
heavy growth of scrub oak which never grows 
high, pitch pine, poplar and some white pine. 
The original forest was cut or burnt off, I pre¬ 
sume, long ago, and what we see is the second 
and possibly in places third or fourth growth. 
The farm is about five miles long, and three 
miles wide, pretty much a wilderness; and the 
surrounding region is very sparsely inhabited, 
and with more dense cover for the wild crea¬ 
tures of the world than we often see nowadays 
in this country. 
A peculiarity of the region is a tendency 
to form level boggy places along the sides of 
the numerous streams and also in depressions 
where there is no stream. These places vary 
from half an acre or less up to sixty or a hun¬ 
dred acres; and are usually planted in cranber¬ 
ries which form an important industry and an 
exception to the statement I have just made as 
to the fertility of the land. It is the natural 
soil of the cranberry plant; and both the upland 
and the bog cranberry grow wild there. These 
cranberry bogs I found in a previous expedi¬ 
tion some years ago, to be characteristic of the 
region much farther southeast on Cape Cod, 
where occasionally I saw magnificent houses 
with beautiful well kept lawns, and on inquir¬ 
ing the name of the fortunate owner, was told, 
‘'Oh, that’s just a Cranberry King.” 
In the game farm region these bogs are 
apt to be lakes of all sizes and shapes. Some 
of them are a trifle deep without much grass, 
reeds or mud in them. Others are very grassy, 
shoal and muddy; and these are ideal places for 
wildfowl to breed and feed. In some of them, 
Mr. Torrey, the superintendent, has placed a 
pair of mallards or black ducks with their wings 
clipped, and they have nests; and some of them 
have young ones. Even the ponds that are not 
grassy and muddy have thick cover close to the 
water’s edge, and in time I think they will be 
breeding places, too. All the ponds and the sur¬ 
rounding thick green cover reminded me very 
much of the innumerable ponds and lakes I 
have seen in South Dakota, where the wildfowl 
have always bred in such great numbers. 
The most interesting pond was the one de¬ 
voted to raising woodducks. It is very grassy 
and shoal. Part of it has been fenced off with 
wire and a number of boxes, like a wren box. 
put on posts. The theory was that as the wood- 
ducks have for thousands of years been nesting 
in hollow trees, they would readily use boxes 
with suitable holes in them. Sure enough they 
did; and the flock placed in the enclosure with 
clipped wings has laid over seventy eggs in 
these boxes. The eggs have been removed and 
placed under hens. Some of them are already 
hatched out, and I had the pleasure of seeing 
the ducklings. 
There is one remarkable circumstance about 
them. I have been informed, and have read, I 
think, in books, that no one knew how the adult 
woodduck removed her young from the hollow 
TWO VIEWS ON AMERICAN GAME ASSOCIATION’S 
FARM. 
tree to the water. The entrance to the nest is 
often twenty or more feet from the ground; and 
as the little fellows were put in the water long 
before they could fly, the wonder was how it 
was done. Some said that the mother took 
them on her back and flew down to the water 
with them. But we can dismiss all that; for 
the young woodducks at the game farm have 
shown how they do the trick. They climb up 
the side of their pen and out as easily as flies 
could do it. They have a sharp nail or some¬ 
thing in each foot which enables them to walk 
deliberately up or down a board or log more 
easily than a lineman climbs a telegraph pole 
or a steeplejack goes up a chimney. 
Finding they could walk up the wooden 
side of their pen whenever they liked, Mr. 
Torrey made a projecting shelf all around the 
pen to stop them. While I was there, on ap¬ 
proaching the pen he found one of the young 
rascals sitting up on the shelf shaking his tail, 
smoothing his down with his bill and saying, “I 
have been climbing trees for a good many 
thousand years, my boy, and you will have to 
build more than a shelf like that to stop me.” 
This climbing faculty of young woodducks 
may possibly be an old story to naturalists; but 
it was “a new one on me,” as the boys say. 
Would not climbing duck be as suitable a name 
as woodduck? What a strange history in the 
far distant past the bird must have had to en¬ 
able it slowly to develop in its young this tree¬ 
climbing ability in addition to web-footedness. 
The Muscovy duck and some crosses of it will 
build in a hollow tree, if you furnish them with 
it; but I do not know whether their young are 
tree climbers. 
The woodduck must have been developed 
during a long period of time in this country 
when old decaying trees or trees that afforded 
hollows of some kind were numerous near 
water. Some of the cypress swamps in Florida, 
where I have seen numerous woodducks, have 
been admirable places for them in this respect. 
The drowned lands which have been numerous 
in some parts of the country may also have af¬ 
forded suitable trees. There used to be wood¬ 
ducks in New Hampshire when I was a boy, 
and the heavy and old timber along the streams 
would account for them. Water which de¬ 
veloped feet that could swim, hollow trees as 
safer nesting places than the ground, a slight 
variation in the toes of some young fellow 
which enabled him to survive by climbing and 
long lapse of time and survival of the fittest did 
the rest. Darwinians will please correct mis¬ 
takes if I make them; and also kindly tell me 
how the beautiful plumage of the male wood¬ 
duck was developed. 
One of the residents near the game farm, 
an experienced sportsman and observer, told me 
that hollow trees near the water had grown 
scarce and had almost disappeared, and in that 
way he explained why the woodducks had 
largely abandoned that region for nesting. His 
reasoning seems to be correct, and the con¬ 
verse also is probably true that if you supply 
artificial hollows for them to nest in, they will 
return to the region. Might not woodducks 
be encouraged and bred in this way all over 
the United States? Mr. Torrey, the superin¬ 
tendent, has plans in mind for hollowing out 
logs with the bark on and nailing them to trees 
in suitable places, or making boxes from slabs 
with the bark on which can usually be obtained 
at sawmills. Something of this sort must be 
done; for the disappearance of the old forest 
growth of the country and the general clearing 
up that is going on will soon destroy entirely 
the original conditions which created and per¬ 
petuated the beautiful woodducks. 
On a large pond close to the house at the 
game farm, with proper wire enclosures, wild 
mallards and blackducks are being reared, and 
I saw many young broods. I also saw in the 
