302 THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



ticular "hair" upon it. And his beak has beyond 

 doubt just come from the wheelwright, who has 

 painted it and varnished it with his choicest ver- 

 milion. " Coppernob " is a flirt. His muddy-headed 

 wife has much to put up with, so have strange ducks, 

 victims of attentions which their furious lords are 

 powerless to prevent. Like the mallards, the red- 

 headed one has the use of his wings, and it is 

 common to see a distracted drake labouring along 

 overhead, in a vain effort to follow all the turns of 

 the abductor and his fickle lady. Last summer a 

 red-headed pochard settled down at St. James's 

 Park as the accepted mate of a common duck. 

 Two drakelings issued from the union, and they have 

 grown up remarkably handsome hybrids. Instead 

 of the well-known green head of the mallard theirs 

 are a rich plum colour, with a fiery gleam in the high 

 lights, faintly reminiscent of their sire's captivating 

 hackles. 



One of the noisiest of our London ducks is the 

 sheldrake. Every now and then a shrill and rapid 

 series of quacks, addressed to his mate, draws the eye 

 to his bright red, beknobbed beak, and his sharply 

 contrasted plumage of chestnut and white and black. 

 He and his mate do not produce in London, or at any 

 rate not abundantly, those fluffy spotted ducklings 

 that make merry the solitary coves of the Scottish 

 coast, but his very early spring plumage and his lover- 

 like antics are as wild and natural in our smoky town 

 as the best of the other ducks. The golden-eye is the 

 most grotesque wooer on the lake. Sometimes he 

 seems ashamed of his black head with a white powder- 

 puff on each cheek. He throws it right back till it 



