Poachers and Poaching by John Watson

Author:John Watson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781620134115
Publisher: Duke Classics

Chapter X - Wild Ducks and Duck Decoying

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There is no European country, however fortunately situated, which has so many species of wild-fowl as Britain. This is partly owing to its insular position, and partly to the food-abounding seas which are on every coast. In their primitive condition these islands must have constituted a very paradise for wild-fowl, and we know that the marsh and fen lands of the south-eastern counties were breeding haunts of myriads of fowl not more than two centuries ago. Even now there are nearly thirty species of wild duck which are either resident or annual visitants to our marine and inland waters. Nearly half of these are now known to have bred within the British Isles, the remaining ones coming from the north only at the severity of winter.

Wild ducks divide themselves into two natural groups according to habit and the manner in which they obtain their food. Sportsmen and fowlers refer to those divisions as "surface" and "diving" ducks. Those which comprise the first class feed exclusively upon the surface and inhabit fresh water; the latter are mostly marine forms, and in procuring their food the whole body is submerged. Among the surface-feeding ducks are the shoveller, sheldrake, mallard, pintail, gadwall, garganey, widgeon, and teal; whilst the latter include the tufted duck, scaup, scoter, surf scoter, velvet scoter, pochard, and golden-eye. Other British ducks which would come naturally into one or other of these groups, but are more or less rare, are the eiders, American widgeon, red-crested pochard, smew, the mergansers, and the buffel-headed, long-tailed, ruddy sheld, Steller's western, ferruginous, and harlequin ducks.

From the fact of their resorting to inland waters the surface-feeding ducks are perhaps the best known. All of them are shy, wary birds, and as difficult of approach as to bring down. Nearly all the species which inhabit fresh water feed during the night, and fly off to the hills to rest and sleep during the day. All of them are birds of considerable powers of flight, and an interesting fact in their economy is the power of the males to change their summer plumage so as to resemble that of the females. As this adaptation only takes place during the breeding season it is probably done for protective reasons.

The common mallard or wild duck, and the teal, being resident breeding birds, are the first to become noticeable in winter, and many thousands are annually taken in the few remaining decoys of this country. The mallard is an exceedingly handsome bird, and one of the largest of its kind. It is an early breeder, and soon after the brown duck begins to sit the male moults the whole of its flight feathers. So sudden and simultaneous is this process that for six weeks in summer the usually handsome drake is quite incapable of flight; and it is probably at this period of its ground existence that the assumption of the duck's plumage is such an aid to protection. The mallard is not

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