200 THE MALLARD. 
‘“‘ Ocior cervis, et agente nimbos 
Ocior Euro.” 
One morning he was observed to pursue a teal, 
which only just escaped destruction by alighting on 
a pond, within a few yards of the place where some 
labourers were at work. 
I should think that the old birds remain in pairs 
through the entire year; and that the young ones, 
which have been hatched in the preceding spring, 
choose their mates long before they depart for the 
arctic regions in the following year. I have a fa- 
vourite hollow oak tree on a steep hill, into which 
I can retire to watch the movements of the pretty 
visitors. From this I can often see a male and female 
on the water beneath me, nodding and bowing to 
each other with as much ceremony as though they 
were swimming a minuet, if I may use the expres- 
sion. Hence I conclude that there is mutual love 
in the exhibition, and that a union is formed. 
When these large flocks of wildfowl take their 
departure in spring for the distant regions of the 
north, about a dozen pairs of mallards remain here 
to breed. Sometimes you may find a solitary nest 
of these birds near the water’s edge, or a few yards 
from it, on a sloping bank thickly clothed with 
underwood: but, in general, they seem to prefer 
the recesses of a distant wood for the purposes of 
their incubation ; though we have had an instance 
of one building its nest in a tree, and of another 
which hatched its young on an old ruin. Last year 
a domesticated wild duck had a brood of ten young 
ones in the month of May; and on the 27th day of 
a 
