rs to tail. He jumped straight up
with a startled squeak, whirled in the air, and came down facing me.
So we remained for a full moment, our faces scarcely two feet apart,
looking into each other's eyes. Then he thumped the earth soundly with
his left hind foot, to show that he was not afraid, and scurried under
the fly and through the brakes in a half circle to a bush at my heels,
where he sat up straight in the shadow to watch me.

But I had seen enough for one night. I left a generous pinch of salt
where he could find it easily, and crept in to sleep, leaving him to
his own ample devices.

IV. A WILD DUCK.

[Illustration]

The title will suggest to most boys a line across the autumn sky at
sunset, with a bit of mystery about it; or else a dark triangle moving
southward, high and swift, at Thanksgiving time. To a few, who know
well the woods and fields about their homes, it may suggest a lonely
little pond, with a dark bird rising swiftly, far out of reach,
leaving the ripples playing among the sedges. To those accustomed to
look sharply it will suggest five or six more birds, downy little
fellows, hiding safe among roots and grasses, so still that one seldom
suspects their presence. But the duck, like most game birds, loves
solitude; the details of his life he keeps very closely to himself;
and boys must be content with occasional glimpses.

This is especially true of the dusky duck, more generally known by the
name black duck among hunters. He is indeed a wild duck, so wild that
one must study him with a gun, and study him long before he knows much
about him. An ordinary tramp with a field-glass and eyes wide open
may give a rare, distant view of him; but only as one follows him as a
sportsman winter after winter, meeting with much less of success than
of discouragement, does he pick up many details of his personal life;
for wildness is born in him, and no experience with man is needed to
develop it. On the lonely lakes in the midst of a Canada forest, where
he meets man perhaps for the first time, he is the same as when he
builds at the head of some mill pond within sight of a busy New
England town. Other ducks may in time be tamed and used as decoys; but
not so he. Several times I have tried it with wing-tipped birds; but
the result was always the same. They worked night and day to escape,
refusing all food and even water till they broke through their pen, or
were dying of hunger, when I let them go.