DUCKS. 323 



DUCKS. 



The very numerous family of the ducks have so many 

 diversities of character, that it is difficult to find any general 

 description that will apply with equal accuracy to the whole. 

 There are about twenty-eight species, which generally or 

 occasionally frequent the shores, estuaries, and fresh waters, 

 in different parts of the British Islands, mostly in the winter 

 season, and on the flat and fenny shores where there are mud 

 deposits and oozy shallows, rather than where the shores are 

 of a bolder character, and the water deeper. Of these, not 

 more than seven or eight are known to breed regularly in 

 the country, though a few more have been occasionally 

 found on the more remote islands. Many of the visitants 

 are evidently natives of the northern countries, and appear 

 in the greatest numbers on the northern parts of the British 

 coasts ; but there are others which appear more abundantly, 

 or, at all events, have been more attended to upon the shores 

 of the flat parts of England, or in the estuaries and creeks 

 of the fenny tracts ; and of the retreats of these when they 



dealers in birds, who receive it from the Baltic, and distinguish it by the 

 name of the Polish swan. In several instances, these swans had pro- 

 duced young in this country ; and the cygnets, when hatched, were pure 

 white, like the parent birds, and did not assume at any age the brown 

 colour borne for the first two years by the young of all the other white 

 swans." " During the late severe weather, flocks of this swan were seen 

 pursuing a southern course along the line of our north-east coast, from 

 Scotland to the mouth of the Thames, and several specimens were 

 obtained." The specimen exhibited was shot on the Medway, where one 

 flock of thirty, and several smaller flocks, were seen. 



In this species, the legs, toes, and webs are of a pale ash-grey, the 

 beak is reddish orange, the lateral margins, the nail at the tip, the nostrils 

 and hose of the upper mandible being black; there is a small basal tubercle 

 on the upper mandible, which never acquires the size of that ornamenting 

 the head of Cygnus olor. This species is easily reconciled to captivity. 

 For some anatomical points of difference between this and the tame swan, 

 we refer to the " Magazine of Nat. Hist. 1839," p. 178. 



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