River and Pond Ducks 



plants, and small fish it feeds on. It is not a strict vegetarian, 

 however delicate and delicious its flesh may be at the proper 

 season. There are many sportsmen who would not pass a 

 shoveler to shoot a canvasback. 



North of the United States, where these ducks chiefly have 

 their summer home, we hear of the jaunty, parti-colored drake, 

 gayly decked out for the nesting season, when he is truly beau- 

 tiful to behold, and charmingly attentive to his more sombre 

 mate. By the time the autumn migration has brought them 

 over our borders, however, he has cast off many of his fine feath- 

 ers, together with his gallant manners, and closely resembles the 

 duck in all but character. He is ever a selfish idler, while she 

 attends to all the drudgery of making the nest in the marshy bor- 

 der of the lake; of incubating from six to fourteen pale greenish 

 buff eggs during four weeks of the closest confinement ; of caring 

 for the large brood and teaching the ducklings all the family arts. 



Shovelers are expert swimmers and divers, though they "tip 

 up" rather than dive for food; they are good walkers also, when 

 we see them in the corn fields, and almost as swift on the wing as 

 a teal. Took, took; took, took, that answers as a love song and the 

 expression of whatever passing emotion the ordinarily silent birds 

 may voice, was likened by Nuttall to "a rattle, turned by small 

 jerks in the hand." 



Like most other ducks of this subfamily, the shoveler is not 

 common in the northern Atlantic states. Salt water never 

 attracts it; but, on the contrary, it rejoices in lakes, sluggish 

 rivers and streams, isolated grass-grown ponds, and even pud- 

 dles made by the rain. In the sloughs and lagoons of the lower 

 Mississippi Valley it is still fairly common all winter, however 

 much it is persecuted by the gunners. 



"These birds migrate across the country to the western 

 plains where they nest," says Chamberlain, "from North Dakota 

 and Manitoba northward, ranging as far as Alaska." In such 

 remote places, where the hand of the law rarely reaches the 

 nefarious pot hunter, he happily finds the ducks in the very prime 

 of toughness. 



1 08 



