THE MALLARD, OR WILD DUCK. "' 



in mild open seasons, with much rain. The decoy was worked generally from 

 the beginning of September to the end of March ; in some instances taking com- 

 menced as early as the second week in August, and in many years it was kept 

 open as late as the end of April. The greatest takes were in the latter half of 

 November, when the foreign Ducks had come in, and in December and January. 



From old family papers connected with a former famous Lincolnshire decoy, 

 at Dowsby, near Falkingham, I learn that from October ist, 1765, to April ist, 

 1766 one year 13,160 Ducks, of various species, were captured. The produce 

 of this decoy in that year realized ^385 i8s. lod. a large sum for those days 

 1084 dozen was sold at 7/5 per dozen.* 



The nest of the Mallard is a very compact structure, the outside of grass and 

 sedge, with a very thick lining of down, in which the eggs ten to twelve are 

 deeply buried. I have found it in all sorts of situations, close to the edge of 

 water, in reeds, on the sides of pools, or drain banks, in the middle of corn or 

 clover fields, or in a plantation amongst briars and grass, a long way from water. 

 They sometimes choose very odd situations for their nests. I have met with the 

 following instances : in a hollow on a pollard willow ; once in an oak in a plan- 

 tation in the old nest of a Carrion Crow ; in ivy, on the summit of a ruined 

 wall ; on the top of a straw stack ; also on the roof of a last year's bean stack, 

 standing in the field. In all these cases the Duck would have to carry her 

 young brood down to the water. 



The Wild Duck nests from the end of March to the middle of April. I have 

 known flyers early in June. The young strong on the wing as old birds by the 

 end of July. During the time the Ducks are sitting the males pack together and 

 frequent the nearest piece of water. About the end of May, or early in June, the 

 drake commences his remarkable change of plumage, and adopts that of his wife. 



In the "Zoologist" for 1886, pp. 228-233, there is a very interesting paper 

 on the " Moulting of Flight-feathers in the Mallard," by Mr. J. E. Harting, the 

 greater portion of which is translated from the French, being an essay on the 

 subject by a well-known sportsman, Baron d' Hamonville, the sum and substance 

 of this is that the drake moults all his primary and secondary quills at once, losing 

 all powers of flight; on the other hand the female moults gradually, and never 

 loses the power of flight, and is thus better able to attend to the wants of her 

 young brood. This rapid moulting of the male and slow moult of the duck is 

 not peculiar to the Mallard, for it occurs also with others of the Anatida:, also 

 with the Black Cock (Tetrao teirixj. 



* \Ve may compare these wholesale prices with those paid by the dealers to the Spurn shore shooters in 

 1841, as (jiven the writer by the late Mr. John Clubley, of Kilnsea ; these were Brent Geese 6d. each ; Mallard 

 1/3; Scaup 4d. ; Curlew 6d. ; Sheldrake 6d. ; Knot id.; Grey Plover 3d.; Golden Plover 4d. : Wigeon 6d. 



