The ducks, too, still resort to our rivermouth, in spite of the railroads and the tall chimneys by which their old feeding-grounds are surrounded. As long as the channel is open, you may see the golden-eyes, or "whistlers," in extended lines, visible only as a row of bright specks, as their white breasts rise and fall on the waves; and farther than you can see them, you may hear the whistle of their wings as they rise. Spring and fall the "black ducks" still come to find the brackish waters which they like, and to fill their crops with the seeds of the eel-grass and the mixed food of the flats. In the late twilight you may sometimes catch sight of a flock speeding in, silent and swift, over the Mill-dam, or hear their sonorous quacking from their feeding-ground. At least, these things were,--and not long since,--though I cannot answer for a year or two back. The birds long retain the tradition of the old places, and strive to keep their hold upon them; but we are building them out year by year. The memory is still fresh of flocks of teal by the "Green Stores" on the Neck; but the teal and the "Stores" are gone, and perhaps the last black duck has quacked on the river, and the last whistler taken his final flight. Some of us, who are not yet old men, have killed "brown-backs" and "yellow-legs" on the marshes that lie along to the west and south of the city, now cut up by the railroads; and you may yet see from the cars an occasional long-booted individual, whose hopes still live on the tales of the past, stalking through the sedge with "superfluous gun," or patiently watching his troop of one-legged wooden decoys. The sea keeps its own climate, and keeps its highways open, after all on the land is shut up by frost. The sea-birds, accordingly, seem to lead an existence more independent of latitude and of seasons. In midwinter, when the seashore watering-places are forsaken by men, you may find Nahant or Nantasket Beach more thronged with bipeds of this sort than by the featherless kind in summer. The Long Beach of Nahant at that season is lined sometimes by an almost continuous flock of sea-ducks, and a constant passing and repassing are kept up between Lynn Bay and the surf outside.