MOULTING OF FLIGHT-FEATHERS IN THE WILD DUCK. 229 
Nearly fifty years ago Charles Waterton made some experi- 
ments on the subject by keeping wild ducks in confinement 
between the months of May and November, and watching them 
attentively during their moult. The results of his observation 
were embodied in an article ‘“‘on the habits of the Mallard,” 
published in the first series of his ‘Essays on Natural History’ 
(pp. 196—202). From this article we make the following 
extract :— 
“At the close of the breeding season the drake undergoes a very 
remarkable change of plumage: on viewing it all speculation on the part 
of the ornithologist is utterly confounded; for there is not the smallest 
clue afforded him by which he may be enabled to trace out the cause of the 
strange phenomenon. The drake, for a very short period of the year, is so 
completely clothed in the raiment of the female that it requires a keen and 
penetrating eye to distinguish the one from the other. About the 24th of 
May the breast and back of the drake exhibit the first appearance of a 
change of colour. In a few days after this the curled feathers above the 
tail drop out, the grey feathers begin to appear amongst the lovely green 
plumage which surrounds the eyes. Every succeeding day now brings 
marks of rapid change. By the 28rd of June scarcely one single green 
feather is to be seen on the head and neck of the bird. By the 6th of July 
every feather of the former brilliant plumage has made its disappearance, 
and the male has received a garb like that of the female, though of a 
somewhat darker tint. In the early part of August this new plumage 
begins to change gradually, and by the 10th of October the drake will 
appear ugain in all his rich magnificence of dress, than which scarcely any- 
thing throughout the whole wide field of nature can be seen more lovely, 
or better arranged to charm the cye of man. This description of the 
change of plumage in the Mallard has been penned down with great care. 
I enclosed two male birds in a coop from the middle of May to the middle 
of October, and saw them every day during the whole of their captivity, 
Perhaps the moulting in other individuals may vary a trifle with regard to 
time. Thus we may say that once every year, for a very short period, the 
drake goes, as it were, into an eclipse; so that, from the early part of the 
month of July to about the first week in August, neither in the poultry- 
yards of civilised man, nor through the vast expanse of Nature's wildest 
range, can there be found a drake in that plumage which, at all other 
seasons of the year, is so remarkably splendld and diversified.” 
These observations of Waterton seem not only to have 
escaped the attention of most English sportsmen, but to have 
been overlooked also by a well-known French naturalist, Baron 
