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^[[time]] began to work in fields where rice was still in the shock near De Witt.

Fields near Stuttgart where damage by ducks had been reported were visited on December 17. The field belonging to E. J. Basye mentioned above as the one where ducks first began to work had an area of 80 acres and rice in the shock was still present on about 60 acres. This rice was cut and shocked about November 15 according to local reports. Shortly after ducks began to come into feed here at night arriving about dusk and leaving before daylight. On about the third night recourse was had to night shooting to keep the birds out but in this particular case it did little good. Men who were present stated that the birds came literally in hordes. So eager were they for food that only those within a few yards would rise at a shot and all would alight immediately. Effort was made to thresh this rice as soon as possible but so little of the grain remained that after half a day the attempted was abandoned.

On examining the field critically I found that in the upper fourth the grain had been somewhat injured by frost while it was maturing so that about half of the rice kernels in each head had failed to mature. In the remainder of the field however the yield, as nearly as could be judged, had been heavy and the rice, of the variety known as Honduras, was of excellent quality. The ducks had come in here while the ground was still soft and from one-sixth to one-fifth of the shocks in the field had been pulled down or trampled down by the birds in feeding, while in some instances in low spots the straw had actually been trampled into the mud. Other shocks had had the cap sheaves pulled off and in all practically the entire yield of rice had been destroyed. What remained was not worth threshing. The heads had been entirely stripped (see fig. 1)

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