Young ducks, too, are good game to the large-mouth, and probably many a young duck finds its way into the maw of a bass. On a pond where bass had taken many young ducks I heard a story of a fisherman who made a floating model of a mother duck, powered it with a propeller, and attached to it by lines of various lengths several floating models of downy ducklings. In each duckling was concealed a hook. The whole flotilla was set afloat, and drifted across the pond. Mother steamed ahead, with young following. Soon the bass, used to a duck diet, began to grab the ducklings. When the model was retrieved several large bass were taken. In Northern waters, where Northern pike, or jackfish, as they're called in the North, abound in duck-nesting waters, pike are accused of eating enough ducklings to affect the survival of the broods. Many a marshland traveler has reported young ducks and young grebes diving, to be seen no more. He's blamed the pike. Sometimes perhaps the young bird has simply come up unobserved. But enough pike's stomachs have proved to have young ducks in them to demonstrate pike do eat ducklings. Strangely, in some areas, pike eat many ducklings; in others they do not eat them. But it's not alone young birds or small birds that get eaten by fish. A twenty-four-inch bass is recorded as having been caught while it still had the legs of a full-grown coot projecting from its mouth. From beak to tip of its outstretched legs the coot measured seventeen inches and it weighed one and one quarter pounds. Angler fish weighing between forty and fifty pounds have been found to have eaten birds. One had the band from a Manx shearwater in its stomach, and another had an adult American merganser. In tropical and subtropical seas the examination of birds seemed to indicate they had been attacked by some fish and seized by the feet, but were able to escape, and a white-winged black tern off Corsica has been seen to disappear under the water, presumably dragged under by a fish. CROWS ARE SMARTER THAN "WISE" OWLS [Illustration] The owl has always been considered the symbol of wisdom. The old saying has it that "fine feathers don't make fine birds," but I'm afraid that the owl has taken in people with its appearance. The owl's reputation for wisdom seems to be based on a staid, impressive appearance combined with an inarticulate disposition. Though owls do at times make a great deal of noise, hooting, shrieking, and whistling, much of the time the owl sits quietly looking wise and saying nothing. But owls don't seem to have much behind the front they put up. People who have studied them find the young are very slow to learn to feed themselves, and one saw-whet owl that was kept captive refused to eat liver put into its cage, apparently not recognizing the meat as food. But when the liver was stuffed into an empty mouse skin the owl at once ate it. One might conclude that the owl was the original "stuffed shirt."