The Wild Duck

“ Autumn passed on towards winter, the nights were long, the great harvest of the leaves fell thickly on the meadow and the stream, the mountain springs were loosed in muddy torrents, and the river roared, swollen and turbid, past the “holt” under the trailing alder-twigs. The moorhens came back from the ponds where they had nested in April and May; the wild duck and the teal flew south from oversea, and in the night descended circling to the pool; a dabchick from the wild gorge down-river took up his abode in the sedges. ”

“ At dawn, as I lay half-awake, I heard a sound that made me jump to my gun—the soft quacking of wild duck in the creek. Stealing cautiously down through the fringe of she-oaks, I came to a fine broad pool, in the centre of which was a small sandbank, whereon stood a black duck with a brood of seven half-fledged ducklings around her, dabbling merrily amongst the weed and débris of the margin. Of course, no one who thinks, unless impelled by sheer hunger, would shoot either an incubating or “just familied” duck, and I laid down my gun with an exclamation of disappointment. ”

“ As soon as the ice breaks up, our lakes are visited by innumerable flights of wild fowl: some of the ducks are extremely beautiful in their plumage, and are very fine-flavoured. I love to watch these pretty creatures, floating so tranquilly on the water, or suddenly rising and skimming along the edge of the pine-fringed shores, to drop again on the surface, and then remain stationary, like a little fleet at anchor. Sometimes we see an old duck lead out a brood of little ones from among the rushes ”

“ No one who knows the self-forgetting devotion with which the birds brood will be surprised that it is possible to come so near an eider-duck sitting in her nest, but it may well excite the astonishment of even an experienced naturalist to learn that the duck suffers one to handle the eggs under her breast without flying away, and that she does not even allow herself to be diverted from her brooding when one lifts her from the nest and places her upon it again, or lays her on the ground at some little distance in order to see the charmingly quaint way in which she waddles back to her brood. ”

“ So the tame duck, tame for unnumbered generations, hearing from afar the shrill cry of the wild drake, will desert her quiet surroundings, spread her little-used wings and become for a time the wildest of the wild. ”

“ The sitting duck comes for food every two or three days, and that is all we see of her for some time, until at length she may be seen coming through the meadow, the half-grown mowing grass behind her trembling and waving in an unusual manner: by-and-by, the road or shorter grass is reached, when it is found the proud mother is bringing home her little fluffy family of perhaps eight to eleven darkie ducklings—quick, active, tiny things that refuse at first all friendly advances, but becoming accustomed to their surroundings soon behave much in the manner of their elders. ”

“ How Wild Ducks Conceal Their Nests. Possibly there is none of our birds that can conceal its nest better than the wild duck. This may be due to the fact that she has to be father and mother both.
In the first place she selects a spot where the foliage, dry sticks or weeds, are exactly the same color as herself. I once found a black duck’s nest right beside an oak stump that was charred black by being partly burned away, and really if you weren’t careful you might look at her all day and not see her, as she was exactly the same color. ”

“ The eider-duck proper is the least beautiful species, but it is nevertheless a handsome bird. The neck and back, a band over the wings, and a spot on the sides of the body are white as the crests of the waves; throat and crop have a white ground faintly flushed with rose-colour as though the glow of the midnight sun had been caught there; a belt on the cheeks is delicate green like the ice of the glacier; breast and belly, wings and tail, the lower part of the back and the rump are black as the depths of the sea itself. This splendour belongs only to the male ”

“ A streamlet that runs through a peaty field is a favourite spot. The little jack-snipe frequent the water-carriers in the irrigated meadows and the wet furrows. When the lake is frozen over the wild duck stand on the ice in the daytime for hours together, leaving the marks of their feet on it.
In walking along the shore lines of drift may be noticed, marking the height to which the waves driven by the wind have carried the floating twigs, weeds, and leaves: just as along the sea the beach is formed into terraces by the changing height of the tides. ”

“ Meade King rightly takes exception to the inclusion of the Wild Duck in the list of species breeding in London. I do not know of any place within four miles of Charing Cross where the Wild Duck nests, or is at all likely to nest. The birds on the Serpentine are perhaps the wildest of all the London park Ducks, but they must all be considered semi-domesticated. Even after the annual slaughter of parti-coloured specimens, I doubt whether of the birds lefc, more than half are coloured like wild birds. ”

“ The wild duck, which must constantly be on the alert for enemies, and uses its wings so much more extensively and its legs comparatively less than the domestic duck, is a much more intelligent fowl than the stupid, well-protected domestic one. The wings of the wild duck are stronger and its legs shorter than those of the barnyard duck. It has been shown that in the wild duck the brain is nearly twice as heavy in proportion to the body as it is in the comparatively imbecile domestic duck.
Many other useful illustrations of disuse, such as the cattle and goats in India, that have dependent ears ”

“ I have even seen a young black duck, whose natural disposition is wild as the wilderness itself, that had profited nothing by his mother's alarms and her constant lessons in hiding, but came bobbing up to my canoe among the sedges of a wilderness lake, while his brethren crouched invisible in their coverts of bending rushes, and his mother flapped wildly off, splashing and quacking and trailing a wing to draw me away from the little ones.
Such an one is generally abandoned by its mother, or else is the first to fall in the battle with the strong before she gives him up as hopeless. ”

“ Of the two dozen species of American wild-ducks, none has a wider celebrity than that known as the canvas-back; even the eider-duck is less thought of, as the Americans care little for beds of down. But the juicy, fine-flavoured flesh of the canvas-back is esteemed by all classes of people; and epicures prize it above that of all other winged creatures, with the exception, perhaps, of the reed-bird or rice-hunting, and the prairie-hen. These last enjoy a celebrity almost if not altogether equal. ”

“ Oh fleeting joys of human life! the duck, so tame yesterday, is quite wild to-day; instead of offering its beak it turns tail and swims away; it avoids the bread and the hand that holds it as carefully as it followed them yesterday. After many vain attempts accompanied by derisive shouts from the audience the child complains that he is being cheated, that is not the same duck, and he defies the conjuror to attract it. ”

“ The flock comes and goes several times, and circles about repeatedly to give the place a thorough examination. If nothing disquieting appears, it descends in an oblique flight, grazes the surface of the water with the tips of its wings, and then swims to the middle of the pond, far from the shore where the danger would be greatest. Nothing, then, is more difficult than to catch a flock of wild ducks off their guard. The hunter has recourse to a ruse and turns to his own account the friendly relations that always exist between the tame duck and its brother, the wild duck. ”

“ Yet the wild duck I pursued was not entirely symbolical, though he was among other things a symbol. What happened in my own case was merely this: that a friend of mine told me that far in the interior of the Fens, in the heart of a labyrinth of lanes and dykes there was a little church which contained some medieval paintings in remarkable preservation. These pictures were said to represent scenes of medieval sport, dealing especially with ducks. ”

“ This is the Wild Duck that has been domesticated and produced all kinds of tame ducks except the one called the Muscovy. Most of the domestic varieties you see in the barnyard look like the wild ones, but some are pure white. ”

“ Not only the general colouring, but every point and every line is so harmonious with the dried sea-weed, that the brooding-bird, when she has drawn down her neck and slightly spread out her wings, seems to become almost a part of her surroundings. Many a time it has happened that I, searching with the practised eye of a sportsman and naturalist, have walked across eider-holms and only become aware of the brooding duck at my feet, when she warned me off by pecking at my shoes. ”

“ The wild duck's nest is usually placed on the ground in some sheltered spot close to still or running water, and the ducklings swim like corks, soon learning the proper use of their flat little bills in gobbling up floating insects and other waterlogged food. Occasionally ducks nest in trees and they have been known to take possession of a deserted rook's nest. ”

“ This is especially true of the dusky duck, more generally known by the name black duck among hunters. He is indeed a wild duck, so wild that one must study him with a gun, and study him long before he knows much about him. An ordinary [Pg 56] tramp with a field-glass and eyes wide open may give a rare, distant view of him; but only as one follows him as a sportsman winter after winter, meeting with much less of success than of discouragement, does he pick up many details of his personal life; for wildness is born in him, and no experience with man is needed to develop it. ”

“ The Wild Duck is migratory as well as resident with us; those that have bred in this country are reinforced on the approach of winter by immense flocks of this and other species, which wing their way hither from the already frozen lakes and rivers of the more northern latitudes, whither the majority return in spring. ”

“ The Wild Duck.—In many parts of England the wild duck is to be found, especially in desolate fenny places where water is abundant. Wild ducks are plentiful in Lincolnshire, and are taken in the decoys, or ponds situated in the marshes, and surrounded with wood or reeds to prevent the birds which frequent them from being disturbed. ”

“ Thinking only of her brood, she plucks the incomparably soft down from her breast and makes with it a sort of felt, which not only lines the whole hollow but forms such a thick border at its upper edge that it serves as a cover to protect the eggs from cold when the mother leaves the nest. Before the work of lining is quite completed, the duck begins laying her comparatively small, smooth-shelled, clouded-green or grayish-green eggs. ”

“ The common Duck is of two kinds, the wild and the tame, the latter being but the same species altered by domestication; the difference between them is very trifling, save that the colour of the Mallard, or male wild Duck, is constantly the same in all the individuals, whereas the Drakes, or tame ones, are varied in their plumage. ”

“ Trustfully the duck waddles after him or rather after her piping offspring, and a second, third, tenth nest is thus emptied, in fact the work goes on as long as the basket will accommodate more nestlings, and one mother after another joins the procession, exchanging opinions with her companions in suffering on the way. Arrived at the sea, the man turns the basket upside down and simply shakes the whole crowd of ducklings into the water. Immediately all the ducks throw themselves after their piping young ones ”

“ They fly, it is true, in some sort of order, but those that come to the mere here travel rather in a row, or line, slanting forwards, something like what military men call in echelon. The teal seem much bolder than the wild duck: they are often shot as they rise out of the brooks ”

“ The eider-duck’s maternal self-surrender and desire for offspring show themselves in another way. Every female eider-duck, perhaps every duck of whatever species, desires not only the bliss of bearing children, but wishes to have as many nestlings as possible under her motherly eye. ”

“ Going from nest to nest he lifts each duck, and looks to see whether the young are hatched and are sufficiently dry. If this be the case, he packs the whole waddling company in his hand-basket, and with adroit grasp divests the nest of its downy lining, which he throws into his hamper, and proceeds to another nest. ”

“ A long shot at a scared grey duck, as, taking the alarm, he makes off down the wind, is no bad test of eye and hand. In return, they are as excellent game-birds dead as living. This last is more than can be said for the handsomest game-bird of the country, the so-called paradise duck. Its plumage, so oddly contrasting in the dark male and reddish white-headed female, makes it the most easily recognised of wild-fowl. It also has developed a well-founded suspiciousness of man and his traps, and so manages to survive and occupy mountain lakes and valleys in considerable flocks. ”

“ An experienced eye can generally tell, by the unusually elevated appearance of the duck on her nest, when she has hatched, and sometimes by creeping quietly forward the little birds may be heard chirping, though they instantly cease on receiving a warning from their mother. ”

“ The chief difficulty confronting a host who desires to give his guests good sport lies in the fact that it is no easy matter to get young hand-reared wild ducks to fly well, and I propose in this chapter to endeavour to show how it can best be done.
I say young birds, as I think it will be admitted that wild duck, if shot in late October or November, will nearly always fly well. Many sportsmen will, however, for various reasons, not want to keep their birds so long, either on the score of expense or for fear of their straying from home. ”