134 



BIRDS OF AxMERICA 



Though the Canvas-back has acquired a great 

 reputation for the flavor of its flesh, it is prob- 

 able that this characteristic taste depends upon 



Photo by H. K. Job Courtesy ot Doubieday. Page & Co. 

 TYPICAL NEST OF CANVAS-BACK 



the local food supply. Various water-plants 

 besides the spicy wild celery please His Majesty, 

 the assumed king of waterfowl, so he is not 

 always spiced up. At various times when I 

 have eaten Canvas-back, I really could not dis- 

 tinguish it from other good-meated wild Ducks. 

 In northern Manitoba the local hunters, I was 

 told, when shooting, usually single out Mallards 

 first, finding them meatier and fully as tasty. 



None the less is the Canvas-back a most fasci- 

 nating waterfowl. Swifter than the proverbial 

 arrow, the flocks fairly sing like bullets, as they 

 pass down wind. Wonderfully agile and grace- 

 ful are their movements in the water, especially 

 when they leap headlong for the dive, leaving 

 one to guess where they may rea]5pear. I once 

 watched two Indians in the Northwest, each in 

 a canoe, out on a large lake, trv to catch a large 

 young Canvas-back not yet quite able to fly. It 

 took them about an hour of the liveliest sort of 

 work before the bird rose, winded, to the surface 

 and let one of them pick it up. 



Its breeding-grounds are the marshes and 

 sloughs of the interior Northwest — North 

 Dakota, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and on up into 

 the trackless wilds. There I have often found 



its nest, a semi-floating pile of dead stems, usu- 

 ally amid a clump of reeds or rushes, or else in 

 long sedge, but always in vegetation growing 

 from water usually at least knee deep. The nest 

 is a sort of deep wicker-basket, lined with dark 

 gray down, in contrast with the white down of 

 the Redhead. The eggs usually number eight to 

 eleven, and are of a peculiar lead-bluish color, 

 with some olive tinge, difi^ering from that of any 

 other Duck. The ducklings are of a decided 

 yellow-olive color. From the first they may be 

 distinguished from others by the straight profile 

 of the upper mandible, always characteristic of 

 the Canvas-back. 



A most hardy species, it is driven southward 

 only by the actual freezing of the lakes. Num- 

 bers of them stay in Lake Cayuga, New York, 

 and other similar bodies of water, till they some- 

 times freeze in and perish. One of their princi- 

 pal lines of migration is southeast across country 

 from the breeding-grounds of the Northwest out 

 to the Atlantic coast at Chesapeake Bav — a 

 noted winter resort of the species. 



I'liut.j liy H. K. Job Courtesy of Outing Pub. Co 



CANVAS-BACK 

 About six weeks old 



Despite incessant persecution, I think that the 

 Canvas-back is on the increase, owing to the stop- 

 ping of the suicidal practice of spring shoot- 



