Where Are the Ducks?

STOCKTON, Md., Jan. 10. -- So far we have had the poorest ducking year ever known in Chincoteague Bay. There are miles and miles of shoals, rich with grasses the wildfowl love so well, and the weather all a man could wish for, but there is hardly a duck on the wing. Why should these thousands of acres of choice feeding ground be abandoned to geese and brant? We have had the finest goose shooting anyone could ask for. A long series of east winds and high tides drove them from the shoals to the island ponds, making from sundown to dark shooting that all who were in it will remember. Every evening for over a week we scored from five to fourteen geese to the gun, all large, fine, and very fat. But the ducks! Last year thousands of redheads and bluebills blackened the shoals in every direction, bunch after bunch trading through the great coast bays. From Isle of Wight [Md.] to Cobb's Island, between eighty and ninety miles of bays and shoals were covered with a restless, changing flight of wildfowl. Where are they? I have looked carefully in FOREST AND STREAM for some word from the many points and bays of the Eastern shore, but find almost nothing about the wildfowl. I think our paper is intended to throw light on just such strange movements of game as this case presents, for there is no doubt that a cause exists for the quick passing of the great body of redheads and bluebills. Coots and squaw ducks are in countless numbers, but we do not bother them. There are also a good number of whistlers and dippers, but the fine ducks -- the choice ones -- the redheads and bluebills are not here.