heads away from the entrance,
pull the string and shut the door. Care should be taken that the string
is fairly high up, so as not to catch the duck's eye. Having got your
birds safely inside, catch them quietly and quickly, and having pinioned
them, take them, if possible, to a cage with some part of it projecting
out into the water. You, of course, feed them regularly, and are careful
to give them some artificial cover to skulk in, as for some time the
pain of the wound and the fright they have had makes them terribly shy.
This cage, once constructed, is most useful for such work, and can be
built at trifling cost, and the size I would recommend is about fifteen
yards long by five yards wide, with a height of five or six feet. Your
own birds soon get used to their part of the business, and, if you are
quiet and quick, soon get over their nervousness.

The advantage of confining your captives for a short time is obvious.
They get used to their surroundings and recognise the lake as their new
home, and soon take to their diet of maize, so that when you liberate
them they rarely give much trouble, and readily mate with your own
birds.

[Illustration: THE CAGE]

One very important point which I have omitted to mention is the
necessity to kill down all rats, hedge-hogs, moles, and weasels in the
vicinity of your breeding places. Rats are the ducks' worst enemies, and
I have known one old doe rat which had no less than sixteen wild ducks'
eggs in her larder when she was dug out and killed. All these eggs had a
small hole in them, and were of course spoilt. We proved conclusively
that she had no partner in her crimes, as we never lost another egg
after her death. Rats are a perfect curse to young ducks, and they will
carry them off even when they are half-grown, occasionally killing two
or three ducklings in a single night without even taking the trouble to
remove them. On another occasion I remember a rat killing a duck whilst
sitting on her nest; the unfortunate bird had allowed herself to be
killed apparently without moving.

Moles do a good deal of damage by burrowing under the nests, thus
forming a cavity into which the eggs fall; they are then carried off by
the mole. More than this, many a duck is either put off laying or
induced to desert her nest when sitting owing to the restless movements
of this little pest.

A last word as regards the numbers you should retain as a breeding
stock. This largely depends on t