THE WILD DUCK 185 
wounded, till the former can get into a place of security, and then 
return and collect them together.”’ 
From this instinctive cunning, Turner, with good reason, imagines 
them to be the chenalopex, or Tox-Goose, of the ancients ; the natives 
of the Orkneys to this day call them the S/y-Goose, from an attribute 
of that quadruped. 
Sheld-drake are more numerous during the summer in North 
Britain than in the South, but in winter they are driven by the 
freezing of their feeding-grounds to more temperate climates. Here 
numbers of them meet the fate of wild fowl generally, and specimens 
are often to be seen exposed in the English markets, though their 
flesh is held in little estimation as food. 
Sheld means parti-coloured. ‘Shelled’ is still current in the 
eastern counties of England. Shelled duck is the more proper 
appellation. Howard Saunders calls it Sheld-duck always. 
THE WILD DUCK 
ANAS BOSCAS 
Flead and neck dark green; at the base of the neck a white collar; upper 
parts marked with fine zigzag lines of ash-brown and grey; breast 
chestnut ; lower parts greyish white, marked with fine zigzag ash-brown 
lines ; speculum dark blue with purple and green reflections, bordered 
above and below with black and white ; four middle feathers of the tail 
curled upwards bill greenish yellow; irides red-brown; feet orange. 
Length twenty-four inches. Female smaller; plumage mottled with 
various shades of brown and grey ; throat whitish ; speculum as in the 
male; all the tail-feathers straight. Eggs greenish white. 
Its size, abundance, and value as an article of food, have given 
to the Wild Duck an importance which belongs to few other British 
birds ; and the modes of capturing it are so varied and interesting 
that they are often to be met with described in works not exclusively 
devoted to natural history. For this reason I shall in great measure 
confine my notice of this bird to such particulars in its history as 
the reader may probably have an opportunity of verifying by 
his own observation in the course of his rambles among places 
which it habitually frequents. 
The term ‘ Wild Duck’, properly applicable to the female bird 
only (‘ Mallard ’ being the distinctive name of the male), is generally 
employed to include both sexes. The difference in the plumage 
of the two is very great, as, indeed, is the case with all those varieties 
of the same bird which, under the name of ‘ Tame Ducks,’ have 
altered the least from their natural wild type. Yet in the summer 
months, when both sexes moult,! the Mallard puts off the whole 
of his characteristic gay plumage, and appears in the sober. brown 
1 Formerly spelt ‘ mute’, from the Latin muéo, to change. 
