78 DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



whose observations he has confidence, has seen a female Wood 

 Duck fly to the pond with nothing in her bill, and when she 

 struck the water a young bird appeared at her side. Mr. Parker 

 believed that the young bird rode o^n her back. This belief is 

 further supported, Dr. Allen says, by the actions of young 

 Wood Ducks when reared by domestic fowls as foster mothers. 

 For the first few days they spend much time riding on the 

 hen's back, and their sharp curved claws enable them to hold 

 on when she walks about. Mr. Parker writes me that he can- 

 not be sure that the young one was on the Wood Duck's back, 

 but he is sure that she carried it somewhere on her. There 

 were five young in the pond, and when she alighted she brought 

 one more which went from her to the other five. She came 

 from a swamp nearly a mile away, and she did not have the 

 duckling in her bill. Mr. Isaac Etheridge of Virginia Beach, 

 Virginia, says that in summer he has traveled many miles in 

 swamps trapping turtles, and during his lifetime has seen many 

 young Wood Ducks carried to the water by the mother birds, 

 but the species is so swift in flight that he could not be positive 

 just how the young birds were carried. Apparently they were 

 carried by the middle. He also asserts that during a severe 

 thunder storm his brother saw a duck flying over the yard with 

 something in her bill. There was a sharp flash of lightning, 

 and the bird dropped what she was carrying. He ran out and 

 picked up a little one still alive. Mr. Chase Littljohn of the 

 California Academy of Sciences gives a somewhat similar in- 

 stance. 



Mr. Horace W. Tinkham of the Federal Farm Land Bank at 

 Springfield, Massachusetts, writes me that he was lying one 

 day nearly asleep on the bank of Fall Brook in Middleborough 

 when he was astonished to see a Wood Duck with a young one 

 in the brook. At a second glance he saw a second young one 

 beside her. He kept watch without moving, and the occur- 

 rence was repeated several times; but owing to his position, 

 which was not good for observation, and to the shadows about 

 the wooded brook, he could not quite distinguish how the 

 young were brought or whether she held them with her bill, 

 but from the fact that the young one was always just in front 

 of her, his impression was that she did so hold them. 



