THE MALLARD. 389 



certain time, they rise on rapid wing in detached flocks, and, to a bird, 

 they go away for the night. At early dawn they return in com- 

 panies, consisting of fifteen or twenty birds, and stay here to pass 

 the day in peace and quiet. When the water is frozen over, they 

 sometimes huddle together on the ice, and at other times collect in 

 one large flock in the adjacent pasture. Every now and then a 

 peregrine falcon makes his appearance, and perches on a neighbour- 

 ing sycamore tree. We know of his approach by the singular agita- 

 tion which takes place amongst the ducks ; they shake their wings 

 with a tremulous noise, and get into a compact group. After this, 

 they all rise in the air; and then you may see the falcon dash at an 

 outside duck with an almost inconceivable velocity. 



"Ocior cervis, et agente nimbos 

 Ocior Euro." 



One morning he was observed to pursue a teal, which only just 

 escaped destruction by alighting on a pond, within a few yards of 

 the place where some labourers were at work. 



I should think that the old birds remain in pairs through the 

 entire year ; and that the young ones, which had been hatched in 

 the preceding spring, choose their mates long before they depart for 

 the arctic regions in the following year. I have a favourite hollow 

 oak tree on a steep hill, into which I can retire to watch the move- 

 ments of the pretty visitors. From this I can often see a male and 

 female on the water beneath me, nodding and bowing to each other 

 with as much ceremony as though they were swimming a minuet, if 

 I may use the expression. Hence, I conclude that there is mutual 

 love in the exhibition, and that a union is formed. 



When these large flocks of wild fowl take their departure in spring 

 for the distant regions of the north, about a dozen pairs of mallards 

 remain here to breed. Sometimes you may find a solitary nest of 

 these birds near the water's edge, or a few yards from it, on a sloping 

 bank thickly clothed with underwood ; but, in general, they seem to 

 prefer the recesses of a distant wood, for the purposes of their incu- 

 bation ; though we have had an instance of one building its nest in 

 a tree, and of another which hatched its young on an old ruin. Last 

 year, a domesticated wild duck had a brood of ten young ones in 



