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Mallard Duck — Part 2
Images coming soon.
Instead of becoming indolent and moody after a plentiful dinner, these ducks are uncommonly lively. They jabber among themselves, spatter the water freely, half fly, half run along the surface of the lake, and are positively playful so long as the leader of the sport, that is on the constant lookout, gives no sign of warning. One might think they were mad, but often their frantic antics indicate that insects are troubling them, and all their spluttering and diving is done to get rid of the pests. Mallards dive and swim under water also to escape danger, but rarely to collect food. During the day they make many bold excursions to the centre of the lake and explore the inlets and indentations of the shore. On the first quack of alarm, however, up bounds the entire flock and, rising obliquely to a good height, their stiffened wings whistling through the wind, off they fly at a speed no locomotive can match. Perhaps the reason for most misses of the amateur hunter is his inability to conceive the rate at which ducks move, and so to hold far enough ahead of the bird he has selected. Mallards waste no time sailing, but after climbing the sky on throbbing wings they continue to flap them constantly. Before alighting it is their habit to wheel round and round a feeding-ground to assure themselves no danger lurks in ambush. They are conspicuous sufferers from the duck-hawk, whose marvelous flight so far excels even theirs that escape is hopeless in a long race unless the duck should be flying over water, into which a sudden plunge and a long swim under the surface to a sheltered corner in the sedges, frees it from the persecutor that lives by tearing the flesh from the breasts of hundreds of such victims every year.
Wary as these ducks are, they are also eminently inquisitive, or the painted, wooden decoys of dingy little females, gay bandana handkerchiefs fluttering from poles, that are used in the south to excite their curiosity, and other time-honored tricks of sportsmen would never have been crowned with success. The mallards are also exceedingly shy, and feel at greatest ease and liberty when the dusk of evening and dawn covers their feeding-grounds and conceals their flight that is often suspected solely by the whistling of their wings through the darkness overhead. Their loud quack, quack, exactly like that of the domestic duck, resounds cheerfully in the spring and autumn migrations.
To see the endearments and little gallantries the handsome drake bestows on his mate in spring, no one would suspect him of total indifference to her later. Waterton and other writers claim that the wild mallard is not only strictly monogamous, but remains paired for life. Perhaps polygamy cannot be fairly charged against him, however suspicious his indifference to his mate and ducklings appears. Many ornithologists claim that he is positively unable to help his mate and young, owing to the extra molt his plumage undergoes at the end of June, when he actually loses the power of flight for a time and does not regain his beautiful full plumage until the autumn. But certainly the character of the domesticated mallard must have sadly deteriorated, if this is so, for in the barn-yard, at least, he is a veritable Mormon.
In a nest lined with down from her breast, and made of hay, leaves, or any material that can be scraped together on the ground, near the water or in a bushy field back from it, the mother confines herself for twenty-eight days. It is then her gay cavalier goes off to his club, or its equivalent, with other like-minded pleasure-seekers, while she bears the full burden of the household. Very seldom does she leave the pale bluish or greenish gray eggs--six to a dozen--to get food and a brief swim in the lake; and she is careful to pull the down coverlet well over the eggs to retain their heat during her outings. As her incubating duties near their end, she usually does not stir from the nest at all. There are some few records of nests made in trees. If the nest is near the water, on the ground, the young ones instantly make for it when they leave the shell; but being unable to walk well at first, the overworked mother must carry them to it in her bill, it is said, if the nest is far back on a bank. Many pathetic stories are in circulation, showing the mother's total self-forgetfulness and voluntary offering of her own life to protect the downy brood. Water-rats and large pike, that eat her babies when they make their earliest dives, are the worst enemies she has to fear until they are able to fly, some six weeks or more after hatching, and the duck-hawk finds them easy prey.
The mallard is by far the most important species we have, as it is the most plentiful, the most widely distributed, and the best known, being the ancestor of the common domestic duck; and although many of its habits have undergone a change in the poultry-yards, others may still be profitably studied there by those unable to reach the inaccessible sloughs, bayous, and lagoons where the wild ducks hide.