The Summer Duck breeds, in New York and New Jersey, according to the season, from early in April until late in May; in July the young birds are not much inferior in size to the parents, though not yet very strong on the wing. I well remember on one occasion, during the second week of that month, in the year 1836, while out woodcock shooting near Warwick, in Orange county, New York, with a steady brace of setters, how some mowers who were at work on the banks of the beautiful Wawayanda, hailed me, and, pointing to a patch of perhaps two acres of coarse, rushy grass, told me that six ducks had just gone down there. I called my dogs to heel, and walked very gingerly through the meadow, with my finger on the trigger, expecting the birds to rise very wild; but to my great surprise reached the end of the grass, on the rivulet’s margin, without moving any thing. The men still persisted that the birds were there; and so they were, sure enough; for on bidding my setters hold up I soon got six dead points in the grass, and not without some trouble kicked up the birds, so hard did they lay. It was a calm, bright summer’s day, not a duck rose above ten feet from me, and I bagged them all. They proved to be the old duck and five young birds of that season, but in size the latter were quite equal to the mother bird. I consider the Summer Duck at all times rather a less shy bird than its congeners, though it may be that this is owing to the woody covert which, unlike others of its tribe, it delights to frequent; and which perhaps acts in some degree as a screen to its pursuer; but except on one other occasion I never saw any thing like the tameness of that brood. The other instance occurred nearly in the same place, and in the same month, I think, of the ensuing year. I was again out summer cock shooting, and was crossing a small, sluggish brook, of some twelve or fourteen feet over, with my gun under my arm, on a pile of old rails, which had been thrown into the channel by the haymakers, to make an extemporaneous bridge for the hay teams; when on a sudden, to my very great wonderment, and I must admit to my very considerable flusteration likewise, almost to the point of tumbling me into the mud, out got a couple of Wood Ducks from the rails, literally under my feet, with a prodigious bustle of wings and quacking. If I had not so nearly tumbled into the stream, ten to one I should have shot too quickly and missed them both; but the little effort to recover my footing gave me time to get cool again, and I bagged them both. One was again the old duck, the other a young drake of that season.