eos An Ue BtO No BU iE Tob N i) 
night I tried the hen a second time. On this occasion she seemed very 
content and seemed happy to adopt the little family of ducklings. She was 
endeavoring to feed them the following morning, so I took them out and 
placed them in one of my movable quail pens which I placed on the nicely 
cut lawn over a sunken dishpan filled with water. I fed them a bountiful 
supply of duck mash which the bantam mother encouraged their eating. 
However, each morning the bucket of water which I had poured into the 
dishpan, filled as it was with insects, was the most tempting item of food 
that I could give them. The little fellows grew and I finally banded them. 
Each day I allowed them their freedom. As they grew they required more 
than a dishpan in which to splash, so I dug a sizable mud puddle in the 
yard which they enjoyed constantly. 
“About six of them were sent over to the State Fair for the pleasure 
of the many visitors there, and the rest stayed around our farm until they 
could fly to the neighboring swamps and to the river. Each night they 
would return to the farm for their meal of mash, then they would fly up 
to the top of the woodshed where they slept. It is only a mile down to the 
river and they were gone by daybreak. They remained with me until the 
twenty-eighth of August, when the last one deserted. All of them were in 
the juvenile plumage and had the characteristic white eye rings and the 
white throats, which in the case of the males extended as a straight line up 
behind the eye. I believe this was the most enjoyable family of pets I have 
ever had.” 
ft a a 
Dashed Hopes 
By C. O. DECKER 
ONE FEBRUARY day we sat on the ocean beach near Daytona, Florida, 
watching the tide as it came in, rolling up in small waves and then running 
out again, each one a little higher than the last. Various bits of debris 
caught in the ebb and flow would be deposited high up by one wave, only 
to be sucked in again by the next. A small rubber ball was being washed 
back and forth when it met the eye of a herring gull, of which there were 
several patrolling the beach. The gull came down and carefully looked the 
ball over, and, not finding any opening by which it could get inside, picked 
the ball up in its bill, carried it up about 25 feet and dropped it on the 
sand. Swooping down, it again examined the ball but found it still intact. 
The gull repeated the maneuver some four times before becoming dis- 
couraged and abandoning his prize. While we sat there two other gulls 
went through the same routine, dropping the ball from heights of 20 to 30 
feet in an apparent attempt to break it open, each in turn giving it up as 
a bad job when the ball failed to act like a clam. Observers tell us that 
gulls open clams by smashing them on the rocks, and their handling of the 
rubber ball was no doubt their instinctive effort to secure a hoped-for 
morsel of food. To us it was amusing; to them it is still an unsolved 
mystery. 
Chicago, Illinois. 
