FOREST AND STREAM. 
51 
July 9, 1910.] 
their owners that they are seldom or ever dis¬ 
turbed. 
Since the breeding of wild ducks for shoot¬ 
ing purposes has been taken up in Great Britain, 
the ducks there have shown themselves as friend¬ 
ly as those across the North Sea. Undisturbed 
in their homes—that is, on the ponds and in the 
fields where they commonly dwell—they regard 
man as merely a moving incident of the land¬ 
scape. They construct their nests on the ground 
or sometimes on piles of hay or straw heaped 
up for this purpose, and hatch out and success¬ 
fully rear their young. Nor is it until these 
young are somewhat able to fly that they venture 
far afield in search of food. When, however, 
this wandering spirit begins to manifest itself, 
it is the part of the keeper to direct it. This 
he does by a judicious distribution of food so 
that at last his ducks expect their food in special 
places. Then then may 
either lessen or perhaps 
wholly discontinue the 
supply of food at home, 
and thus induce the 
birds to perform regu¬ 
lar journeys once or 
twice a day between 
their feeding grounds 
and the ground where 
they are bred and live. 
It is even said that at 
certain places the ducks 
have been trained to . 
come to certain spots to 
be fed by the blowing of 
a horn. Evidently, the 
place for shooting must 
lie between the feeding 
ground and the home 
ground, and the gunners 
must time their move¬ 
ments so as to get in 
their blinds or “butts” a 
little before the time for 
the flight. In this way 
the ducks, never being 
disturbed at either of 
their roosting pjaces, but 
only while in the air flying about, never become 
wild and are not driven away. 
Precisely this sort of thing might be done by 
almost any farmer in the United States who was 
willing to take the pains to protect his ducks 
during the breeding and rearing time and to 
secure a few wild ducks’ eggs. Practically the 
whole farming country west of the Alleghenies 
as far as the Rocky Mountains is naturally a 
great breeding ground for wild ducks, and many 
millions might be reared there by the owners 
of the soil if they were willing to take the 
trouble to do it. The reward would come either 
from the added food supply or from the revenue 
to be derived from leasing the shooting to gun¬ 
ners or from the sport of having the shooting 
for themselves. 
The essential thing in an attempt of this kind 
is to protect the birds during the laying and rear¬ 
ing season from the vermin so likely to destroy 
any young things. Cats, rats, weasels and skunks 
are glad to kill young ducks or to plunder the 
nests. Hawks, crows, magpies and even black¬ 
birds may do the same thing. A certain amount 
of protection from birds is afforded by bushes 
or other undergrowth, but on the other hand this 
affords the very cover desired by small animals. 
There is no safety except in building around the 
inclosure a tight fence which shall run down 
eight or ten inches or more beneath the surface 
of the ground. The fence must be so tight that 
not even a small mouse can pass through the 
meshes of the wire. It must also be so pro¬ 
tected on the outside that nothing can climb 
over it. This is best done by having a smooth 
surface near the top of the fence which surface 
shall be turned out at an angle so that nothing 
can by any possibility climb over it. Such a 
fence need not be very high, but on the other 
hand it must be so high that neither dog nor 
cat of any kind can jump over it. Systematic 
trapping of the small animals must then be un¬ 
dertaken and the keeper should be sure that all 
within the fence have been exterminated before 
he begins the experiments with his birds. He 
YOUNG GOSHAWKS—FOUR WEEKS OLD. 
From a photograph by T. H. Jackson. 
should also make-a business of killing all neigh¬ 
boring injurious birds that he can. These species 
after they have once settled down to live in a 
certain locality are extremely local in their habits 
and do not wander far. Day after day they go 
over the same ground, and if a hawk has been 
seen flying over a meadow at a certain time to¬ 
day, it is very likely that it will be found there 
to-morrow at about the same time. An intelli¬ 
gent keeper knowing all these things will keep 
the vermin about his wildfowl pond well driven 
off. 
Even at the present day it should not be diffi¬ 
cult for the farmer or the farmer’s son in many 
of the prairie States to secure a setting of mal¬ 
lard’s eggs and to rear from them a handsome 
brood. We recommend as little interference with 
the young ducks as possible. They should be 
well fed and have plenty of water, but it is not 
especially desirable that they should spend any 
great amount of time in the water, since in the 
early weeks of their lives young ducks are sub¬ 
ject to diseases brought on by cold and wet. 
When autumn comes it might perhaps be well 
enough to pen up the brood that has just been 
reared and keep them in confinement during the 
winter. The next year they will give him a 
large crop of eggs and the ducks hatched from 
that crop may be treated differently from the 
first ones. If I had such a brood of ducks I 
would not confine them, but would let them go 
wherever they wished, feeling reasonably cer¬ 
tain that when spring came, a number of them, 
perhaps a number larger than those which went 
away in the fall, would return next spring and 
breed where they had been reared. I do not 
see, provided always they are protected from 
enemies and given an abundance of food, why 
such a park or pen might not be each season as 
full of breeding females as it could hold. 
If the matter were generally taken up by the 
farmers of a district, the number of wild ducks 
that could be reared at practically no expense 
whatever is very large. It has always seemed 
to me that there was a far better chance to ac¬ 
complish good things in 
the breeding of wild 
ducks than in the breed- 
of our upland game. 
Probably there is little 
or no demand for swans 
which I take it are sold 
chiefly for ornamental 
purposes, but I know of 
no reason why wild 
geese should not be bred 
in confinement. If this 
was done each year, 
these millions of birds 
would to some extent 
scatter over the whole 
country and would 
greatly relieve the diffi¬ 
culty of the present 
shooting situation. The 
Canada goose is larger 
and at a proper age 
quite as toothsome as 
the domestic goose, and 
there is no reason why 
it should not bring quite 
as good prices. At pres¬ 
ent there is a farm on 
which wild geese are be¬ 
ing raised in Virginia, but these birds are reared 
wholly for their feathers, which are plucked 
from them twice a year. They have become 
truly domestic and show no tendency to wander. 
While the birds there are chiefly Canada geese, 
yet there are not a few snow geese and some 
other species. This matter and matters like 
these concern every gunner inhabiting this con¬ 
tinent from Alaska and Labrador on the north 
down to Florida and Texas on the south. 
Some of the persons in Great Britain who 
rear ducks for the market do it by means of 
incubators and brooders. Ducks do not seem to 
be subject to the same complaints that destroy 
so many pheasants and partridges. On the other 
hand they are more or less in danger all the 
time from the attacks of active enemies. It is 
quite possible that if more duck eggs could be 
procured than the ducks at hand could cover, 
that they might be hatched in incubators and 
finally given to a hen to bring off just as the 
eggs were about to hatch. Orange, 
[to be continued.] 
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