The Black Duck 



Walter K. Putney 



Here is one of the most curious of our water fowl— the black 

 duck. He is very hard to approach and yet he is one of the easiest ; 

 he is numbered among the most common of our ducks and yet he 

 is not the one most commonly shot ; he is easily decoyed and yet 

 he is very suspicious of ordinary decoys and will seldom venture 

 within gunshot. 



Now, how do you think that all of these things can be when they 

 seem so contradictory? 



Black ducks are very numerous and it is only the young and 

 inexperienced ones that get shot in any numbers. Old ones are 



ever fearftil of ambush and are very easily alarmed. If they hear a 

 gunshot, even at some distance away, they rise from every quarter 

 and fly away. There is one very peculiar fact about their flieht 

 when alarmed. Most ducks rise from the water very gradually, 

 often splashing the surface for several rods before finally getting 

 into the air; but the black duck is able to dart up into the air 

 almost perpendicularly and will quickly get beyond gun range. 

 The black ducks stay well out from shore of a bay or large lake 

 during the day, so that they may watch all means of approach, and 

 they feed mainly at night in the marshes and coves, around little 

 islands of turf. While they are very suspicious of ordinary decoys 

 used in attracting ducks, yet they can be quite easily deceived by 

 little rafts of mud or weeds set out a little distance from slioro. 



3G5 



