Bird lore - Project Puffin

The Shoveller 59
to their small size, they do not command so much as the Canvasback, Redhead,
or Mallard. In the winter of 1915, a gunner offered to sell me a pair on the
streets of New Orleans for sixty-five cents. It was against the law in Louisiana
to sell or offer for sale these birds, and I am not certain that this man was
able to dispose of his Ducks before being taken in charge by a game-warden.
On the whole the Shoveller is not only one of our handsomest species of
wildfowl, but is a very valuable game-bird. The numbers annually killed are
prodigious, and it is the eighth wonder of the world that it has been able to
withstand the continuous persecution of gunners to which it has been so long
subjected. Laws prohibiting the sale of wildfowl have been enacted in a few
states within recent years, and bird-reservations have been established in
regions inhabited by the Shoveller. Where sale is prohibited, the chief incentive
for killing by the market-hunter is taken away and thus one big destructive
agency is removed. The progress made in both of these directions is too slight
to insure the perpetuation of the species on our continent; but, as Shovellers
are still to be found in goodly numbers, and as the sentiment for bird-conserva-
tion is rapidly growing, it would appear that this Duck has a fair chance of
persisting among us for a long time to come.