Note 44 — PETER KALM’s TRAVELS. (continued 4)

November the 9th. All the old Swedes and Englishmen born in America whom I ever questioned, asserted that there were not near so many birds fit for eating at present, as there used to be when they were children, and that their decrease was visible. They even said, that they had heard their fathers complain of this, in whose childhood the bays, rivers and brooks were quite covered with all sorts of water fowls such as wild geese, ducks, and the like. But at present there is sometimes not a single bird upon them; about sixty or seventy years ago, a single person could kill eighty ducks in a morning; but at present you frequently wait in vain for a single one. A Swede above ninety years old, assured me that he had in his youth killed twenty-three ducks at a shot. This good luck no body is likely to have at present, as you are forced to ramble about for a whole day, without getting a sight of more than three or four. Cranes44 at that time came hither by hundreds in the spring: at present there are but very few. The wild Turkeys, and the birds which the Swedes in this country call Partridges and Hazel-hens were in whole flocks in the woods. But at this time a person is tired with walking before he can start a single bird.