But for ducks and the duck hunter the lighthouse family would die of inanition.  With the cold weather comes the ducks, and they continue to come till the warmer blasts of spring drive them to the northward.  Montauk Point is a favorite haunt for this sort of wild fowl.  It is a good feeding ground, is isolated, and there is nearly always a weather shore for the flocks to gather under.  But year by year the point is being more and more frequented by sportsmen, and the reports of their successes increase the applicants for lodgings at the light.  Some 20 gunners were out there last week with the most improved paraphernalia for the sport, and did telling work.  Flight shooting is the favorite method of taking them.  The light stands very near the end of the point, about a sixteenth of a mile to the west, and all migratory birds in passing south seem to have it down in their log-book that they must not only sight this structure, but must also fly over it as nearly as possible.  Hence the variety and extent of the flocks which are continually passing is a matter of interest and wonder to a student of natural history as well as to the sportsman.  Coots, whistlers, soft bills, old squaws, black ducks, cranes, belated wild geese, and, in fact, all sorts of northern birds make up this long and strange procession, and the air is frequently so densely packed with them as to be actually darkened, while the keen, whistling music of their whizzing wings makes a melody that comparatively few landsmen ever hear.  Millions of the birds never hesitate at this point in their flight, although thousands of them do.  These latter make the neighboring waters their home for the rest of the winter.  Great flocks of ducks are continually sailing about the rugged shores, and the frozen cranberry marshes of Fort Pond Bay, lying to the westward, are their favorite feeding-grounds.  The birds are always as fat as butter when making their flight, and their piquant, spicy flavor leads to their being barbecued by the wholesale at the seat of shooting operations.  One of the gunner’s cabins has nailed up in it the heads of 345 ducks that have been roasted on the Point this winter.

Early morning is the favorite time for shooting.  At daybreak the flights are heavy, and from that time until seven o’clock in the morning they increase until it seems as though all the flocks which had spent the night in the caves and ponds on the Connecticut shore were on the wing and away for the south.  By ten o’clock in the forenoon the flights grow rarer, and the rest of the day only stragglers come along.  A good gunner can take five dozen of these birds easily in a morning’s work, provided he can and will withstand the inclemency of the weather.