CHAPTER LXX 



THE MALLARD 



A DUCK out of water is the embodiment of vulgarity, recall- 

 ing a fat, big-boned, coarse woman, and the drake recalls a 

 variegated specimen of the horsey fraternity ; for he is loud, 

 has a certain stop-and-look-at-me air, and cannot walk. In 

 the water, again, these birds have a mechanical-bird look, 

 and hence the power of decoys ; whilst flying through the 

 azure they look merely grotesque, as though they had no 

 business to be on wings. And yet when, in the cold winter, 

 you hear their precise wing-beats in the long nights, and their 

 hoarse cries reach you from the dark reed, you realise what 

 is melancholy. Such a feeling as the falling of the rain in 

 a plantation gives you : a lonely sense of coming woe and 

 desolation. 



But a fen-bred flapper is the juiciest and sweetest of 

 table-birds, for all your migrants smack of the sea-grass, a 

 flavour no sauce will kill. The home bird is bigger, too. 



In my opinion, the wild duck mates for life, though they 

 are reported to pair in February, as I think rooks do, and 

 many another bird who is reported to pair for a season only ; 

 for you may see them in pairs all the year through, after 

 the rearing of the young is done and the young flapper can 

 do for himself; for in the education of his progeny the 

 mallard takes no part, the husbands going in noisy bands 

 to enjoy themselves, whilst their spouses rear the family 

 on the marshes and in the reed-beds. Nor do the hens 

 show much originality or ingenuity in selecting their cradles, 

 for they often make the rushy down-lined nest on the top 



