LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN WILD FOWL. 163 



from the water is aometimes as much as 60 or 70 rods, and generally more or less on au 

 elevation, they need the maternal guidance to their favorite element. 



Audubon (1840) says: 



If the uest is placed immediately over the water, the young, the moment they 

 are hatched, scramble to the mouth of the hole, launch into the air with their little 

 wings and feet spread out, and drop into their favorite element; but whenever their 

 birthplace is at some distance from it, the mother carries them to it one by one in 

 her bill, holding them so as not to injure their yet tender frame. On several occa- 

 fiions, however, when the hole was 30, 40, or more yards from a bayou or other piece 

 of water, I observed that the mother suffered the young to fall on the grasses and 

 dried leaves beneath the trees, and afterwards led them directly to the nearest edge 

 of the next pool or creek. At this early age, the young answer to their parents' call 

 with mellow pec, pee, pee, often and rapidly repeated. The call of the mother at such 

 times is low, soft, and prolonged, resembling the syllables pe-ee, -pe-ee. 



The young are carefully led along the shallow and grassy shores, and taught to 

 obtain their food, which at this early period consists of small aquatic insects, flies, 

 mosquitoes, and seeds. As they grow up, you now and then see the whole flock run 

 as if it were along the surface of the sluggish stream in chase of a dragon fly, or to 

 pick up a grasshopper or locust that has accidentally dropped upon it. They are 

 excellent divers, and when frightened, instantly disappear, disperse below the sur- 

 face, and make for the nearest shore, on attaining which they run for the woods, squat 

 in any convenient place, and thus elude pursuit. 



Mr. E. G. Kingsford (1917) has seen the wood duck carry its young 

 to the water and thus relates his personal experience : 



Early in July, 1898, while tented on the bank of the Michigamme River, town- 

 ship 43, north range 32 west, section 1, Iron County. Michigan, I had the good fortune 

 to see it done. The nest was in a hollow pine that stood directly back of the tent 

 and about 200 feet from the water, and the hole where the old duck went in, was 50 

 or 60 feet from the ground. After seeing the old duck fly by the tent, to and from 

 her feeding grounds up the river many times during the time of incubation, one morn- 

 ing before sunrise she flew by from the tree to the river with a little duck in her beak 

 which she left in an eddy a short distance upstream. She then made 10 or 12 trips 

 to the nest and each time took a little duck in her beak by the neck to the water, 

 where they all huddled in a little bunch. It was all done in a few minutes, and she 

 evidently took them to the water very soon after they hatched, as they were only 

 little balls of down. In going to and from work, we passed the little bunch many 

 times. On our approach the old duck would fly away and leave the little ones 

 huddled in a bunch near the shore where the water was quiet. 



Mr. E. F. Pope in a letter to Mr. Edward H. Forbush says: 



Once while fishing on the Nueces River in southeastern Texas, I observed a female 

 wood duck bringing part of her brood of 10 ducklings down from a white- oak stub 28 

 feet above the water. There were three or four of the young already in the water 

 .vhen I appeared on the scene. She emerged from the cavity in the stub with a 

 young duck on her back and simply dropped straight down into the water, using her 

 wings to check the speed of her descent. When she arrived within a foot or two of 

 the surface she suddenly assumed a vertical position which caused the duckling to 

 slide from her back into the water. She rose quickly, circled a time or two, reentered 

 the stub, and at once repeated the performance until the whole brood of 10 were on 

 the water. 



