The Mallard 41 



■ worms which sometimes become serious pests. Professor Aughey found in the stom- 

 .achs of ten Mallards, taken in Nebraska, 244 locusts and 260 other insects, besides 



moUusks and other aquatic food. Examination of 126 stomachs of the Mallard 

 made at the Biological Survey revealed 17 per cent animal-matter food and 83 

 per cent vegetable. The most important items of the animal food found were 

 •dragon-fly nymphs, fly larvae, grasshoppers, aquatic beetles, and hemiptera. 

 Bivalve and univalve mollusks are consumed in numbers, and earth-worms and 

 crustaceans also are devoured. The principal elements of the vegetable food are 

 seeds of smartweeds {Polygonum), seeds and tubers of pondweed (Potamogeton) 

 and of sedges. Other items of importance are the seeds of wild rice (Zizania) 

 .and other grasses, of burhead (Sparganium), hornwort (Ceraiophyllum) , water 

 lily (Brasenia), and widgeon grass {Rtippia). A great many vegetable sub- 

 stances of less importance are included in the Mallard's diet, of which the follow- 

 ing are worthy of note: Wild celery, algae, roots of arrowhead {Sagittaria), 

 fruits, such as grapes, dogwood, sour gum, and bayberries, and the seeds of such 

 small aquatic plants as millweed (Myriophyllum), horned pondweed (Zanni- 



■ chellia) and mermaid-weed {Proserpinaca). 



Mallards and other wild ducks are of much service to the rice planters of the 

 south, for they feed largely on the crayfish, which injure the dikes and levees, and 

 ■on the volunteer or red rice which they glean in the fields after the harvest, and 

 which if left to grow produces the red rice so deleterious to the crop. The Mallard 

 is of great value to the country as a means of food supply alone. Undoubtedly 

 the annual sum received for Mallards in the markets of the United States would 

 run into very large figures. 



The Mallard was found in such numbers during the early 

 ts ormer settlement of the West that a skilled gunner equipped with modern 



weapons might have killed hundreds in a day. It bred with other 

 wild ducks about all the prairie sloughs of the north, and its eggs and flesh formed 

 ^ considerable part of the food of Indians, half-breeds and settlers. It was abund- 

 ant as a breeding bird in the early days through a large part of the Middle West 

 -and in all the Western Canadian Provinces. 



Within the past forty years there has been a tremendous decrease in the annual 

 ■flight of Mallards and other fresh-water ducks that winter in the south. 



Reports from various localities indicate that the numbers of 

 Its Decrease birds have decreased from 50 to 90 per cent; but large flights of 



wild fowl from the vast regions of the north still crowd into the 

 unfrozen waters of the Gulf and South Atlantic States in winter. Therefore, the 

 ■decrease there is not so noticeable as it is on the breeding range in the north. 

 Mr. Henry Oldys, of the Bureau of Biological Survey, says that wild fowl are now 

 becoming so scarce along the west coast of Hudson Bay where there are no moose, 

 •caribou are few and the fishing is poor, that the few people living there who 

 have always depended largely on the birds they could pack away in the fall 

 iind it difficult to get food enough to carry them through the winter. 



