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 July, 1911 NESTING NOTES ON DUCKS OF THE BARR LAKE REGION,COLO. 127 ment is complete. In fact we seldom flushed the parent bird from nests containing incomplete sets, although a. good many such were found. Complete sets ranged in number from seven to twelve. The sixteen nests of which we kept a definite record contained the following sets: one of twelve, six of eleven, one of ten, two of nine, five of eight, aud one of seven. 'hese were only a fraction of the total number of nests found, but a fair estimate of the average clutch in all the nests examined would be nine or ten eggs. 'he first brood of young birds was found June 22, and on July 5 and 6 several broods of half grown young were seen. 'he hidiug instinet of the ducklings during the downy period is little short of miraeulons. One fond mother bird which flushed almost from between my feet in a wet grassy meadow left eight tiny brown balls of down in plain sight within arm's length of me; yet after they had scamper- Fig. 40. THE SAME NEST AS THAT SHO'N IN FIG. 39 gVITH CONCEALING VEGETATION REMOVED ed to shelter fifteen minute's careful search brought to light only three babies, al- though I knew that the remaining five must be hiding within a radius of four or five feet. When flushed from a brood of young ones the mother bird employs all the arts known to birddom to entice the intruder away from her babies; Huttering through the grass. feigning a broken wing, and uttering low cries, utterly un-duek- like in tone. 'he mother duck stays with her brood at least until they are full grown and on the wing. One devoted mother who was surprised by us in a narrow lagoon with her brood of five three-fourths grown ducklings, courageously swam back and forth in front of us, and not twenty-five feet distant, endeavoring to distract our