The Audubon Societies 



75 



THE LURE OF THE WILD DUCK 



By WILLIAM L. FINLEY* 

 Photographs by H. T. Bohlnian 



OR three days 

 we had tramped 

 the trails across 

 southern Ore- 

 gon, where the 

 I ascade Range 

 jnins the Siski- 

 \i)us. These 

 trails led up and 

 down the silent 

 aisles through a great pine-forest. The 

 morning of the fourth day found us follow- 

 ing down the eastern slope to the edge of the 

 ridge that, overlooked the basin of the 

 Lower Klamath, and its broad marshes. 

 The wide wastes were silent in the summer 

 sun, hazy, far away, mysterious. Here la}' 

 the land of my dreams. After twenty j'ears 

 of waiting I was looking out over this place 

 of mystery that laj' far beyond the north- 

 ern rim of my home hills. How the land 

 where the wild ducks breed had lured me! 

 From this distance, as I stood on the 

 mountain slope, the marsh was a level sea 

 of green; but, as I discovered afterward, 

 that view was totally deceptive of its real 

 character. The ocean's surface tells noth- 

 ing of the thousand hidden wonders — so 

 the marsh. There is a lure in the untrodden 

 stretches. The unmeasured extent of these 

 tules is just the same as when Lewis and 

 Clark blazed the first trail into the Oregon 

 forest. They will defy civilization to the 

 end. The trapper and the hunter have 

 plied the streams, and the water of the lake 

 itself, but the tule-marsh lies untouched, 

 a maze, forbidding, impenetrable. 



The charm of the tule-marsh lay in its 

 wildness. It is the ancestral nesting-ground 

 of many species of wild fowl. We camped 

 at the edge of the marsh that night, and 

 early the next morning bailed out an old 



*Mr. Finley for many years has repre- 

 sented the National Association of Audubon 

 Societies as agent in the Pacific Coast region. 

 Many of his experiences with western bird- 

 life while on field-trips for the .Association 

 will be given in a series of articles of which 

 this is the first. 



trapper's boat, and paddled down the 

 right bank of the river. There were many 

 marsh sounds that I shall never forget. 

 The Red-winged and Yellow-headed Black- 

 birds fluttered in and out, and swung and 

 sang on the bending tops of the tall canes. 



Edging silently along, close to the reeds, 

 I came to a turtle lying asleep on a water- 

 soaked log. He didn't see me until I 

 touched him on the back. Once or twice 

 a snake glided away among the tules. All 

 the time I had been coming nearer to a 

 place where a Bittern was pumping. He 

 was a ventriloquist, for when I thought he 

 was twenty feet away, I still sneaked fifty 

 feet nearer. Punk-a-luiik, punk-a-lunk, 

 so he said, but this pumping was only the 

 end of the call. The beginning was a blub 

 blub! like water bubbling down into a big 

 empty cask. I kept pulling myself along 

 by the overhanging tules. Suddenly I met 

 him face to-face, and he flapped away 

 with a frightened quork. 



x\t the next bend of the river I waded 

 out through two feet of water to a small 

 grassy island. It looked like an ideal place 

 for ducks to nest, but a duck's home is 

 not easy to tind. Suddenly, however, a 

 female Mallard flushed from between my 

 feet; I had straddled a nest of ten eggs 

 before the mother flapped off lamely 

 through the grass. Such boldness is a 

 common trait of the ducks. Twice during 

 the morning I planted my foot within a 

 few inches of a brooding duck before she 

 flew. 



Ducks are very different in individuality. 

 I was floundering along at the edge of the 

 water when I came upon a Pintail on her 

 nest in the dry tules. By chance I saw her 

 squatting low on the nest, and passed with- 

 in ten feet, as if I had not seen her. I 

 circled and went back three times, draw- 

 ing a bit nearer, saying by my actions, if 

 not by my eyes, "I haven't the faintest 

 idea you are there." The surprising part 

 of it is, she believed me. I went on nosing 



