The Endurance of young Wild Ducks.



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THE ENDURANCE OF YOUNG WILD


DUCKS,


AND THE PERILS THAT SURROUND THEM.


By Innis Dorrien-Smith.


At the Scilly Isles a very large number of small rocky islands

are inhabited only by wild birds, where gorse, bracken, and thrift

grows above the high tide confine. The gorse is always more or less

in flower, but in the springtime it makes large patches of the most

brilliant golden-yellow, forming a wonderful contrast to the pure

blues, greens and purples of the sea. Here the linnets twitter

merrily and nest.


The sea-pink, or thrift, in May is a wonderful wealth of

colour ; a rosy pink carpet, especially on the island of Annette, where

it covers the whole of the ground up to the big boulders on the verge

of the sea, but of this particular island I hope to write another time.


In the autumn, the bracken turns into brilliant yellows, golds

and browns, and again the blue sea, and it is really blue, forms a

most striking contrast. On some of these uninhabited islands a few 7

wild Duck nest where there is no fresh water for their young to be

brought up on. But the parent birds carefully think out their

whole plan of providing for their young beforehand, and a daring

plan it sometimes appears to be.


Last spring, a launch was steaming down the channel between

some of these islands, when the boatman suddenly noticed a bird

with apparently a long tail, on the water: steaming nearer he

discovered it to be a common wild duck with a brood of fourteen

young ones following behind as closely as possible. " These had

evidently come from the island of Samson, which lies about three

quarters of a mile across the sea to the westward of Tresco, and

the old bird was wfisely braving the elements, not to mention the

Gulls, to bring her family to the fresh water pools of Tresco : for

the shores of which island she and her ducklings were making as

quickly as possible.


On landing there they had a steep sand bank to walk up and

rough ground with bracken and brambles to get through ; altogether

a quarter of a mile to cross before the fresh water w r as reached.



