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to work out into the heavier rice at the sides and here the grain was trampled and bent over by the hordes of birds. The heads of rice in which the ducks had been working dried and turned a light yellow so that with practise they could be distinguished at a distance against the dark green of the surrounding areas. If undisturbed the birds returned each night to continue feeding where they had stopped on the preceding occasion. I watched fields in which the birds cleaned out the rice in an area 200 yards long by ten yards wide each night for several nights in succession. The early stands of thin rice suffered most: the predilection of the ducks for the thin hulled early maturing Sue Hero Variety was especially noticeable. In many cases the ducks were attracted by abundance of grass seeds in foul rice but cleaned out both the grass and rice.
Ducks did not drop into dense full stands of rice but worked in to it from the margins. The first line of birds penetrated the dense growth of grain making scattered narrow lanes while those that followed wallowed down the bulk of the stalks in feeding on the heads. In feeding in the fields the duck showed a tendency to congregate in large flocks. Bunches came in and circled over the fields until one flock found a suitable place and alighted. The others then decoyed in to them and birds that came later followed so that it was not unusual to find 5000 Pintails feeding in one spot. The destruction wrought by these birds may be imagined. The ordinary low gabbling made by one of these ducks in feeding was magnified in these flockings until it formed a continuous rumbling rearing sound audible distinctly at over half a mile through which came occasional high pitched quacking calls made by ill-