AUSTRALIAN DUCK 
109 
about forty feet above the level of the open sea. The clutch was possibly the work 
of two females. From a careful examination of the literature it would seem that the 
normal clutch is smaller than that of the Mallard: about seven or eight. The eggs 
are smooth and slightly glossy, pale greenish white, 56-58 mm. by 41-42.5 mm. 
(Mathews, 1914-15). The incubation period is evidently the same as that of the 
Mallard, twenty-seven to twenty-eight days (Heinroth, 1908). There is an interest- 
ing case on record of a nest being flooded for two hours, during which the duck swam 
about over the nest-site in evident distress. When the water had gone down she 
resumed incubation and eventually hatched out all her eggs (Dennis, 1907). 
The fact that some ducks nest in trees has long made them the subject of tales, 
fabulous and otherwise, as to how they convey the young to the ground or to the 
water. Unfortunately the reports of the more unusual methods reach us only at 
second or third hand. The really reliable, direct observations indicate that the 
young of Australian Black Duck are coaxed into jumping down from the nest as is 
the case with other members of the family. 
I have some very interesting notes on the non-breeding of Australian Ducks and 
other water-birds during drought years, kindly sent in by Mr. Edwin Ashby of 
Blackwood, South Australia. It seems that during times of great drought in central 
and northern Australia great quantities of this and other species come down to the 
Murray River district and other parts of South Australia. Sometimes these strangers 
remain through one or even more breeding seasons without pairing, or showing any 
signs of breeding. More remarkable still, the influx of outsiders seems to stop the 
local stock from breeding also. When the drought is broken in the north, these hosts 
of water-fowl return to their former haunts. 
Status. All the older writers describe this species as extremely abundant, 
particularly during periods of flood. In the early ’80’s in the Clarence River district 
it was so numerous that it was no uncommon thing for a couple of guns to bag over 
one hundred in a single day (Savidge, in North, 1913). Though diminished in num- 
bers they are still plentiful except in the drained and settled districts, and form the 
mainstay of the Australian duck-shooter. A recent letter from a correspondent, Mr. 
Charles T. Barnard, a resident for 48 years in central Queensland, describes the 
Australian Ducks in general as holding their own, and well protected by laws in the 
more settled parts. Farther back their breeding places are practically undisturbed 
(by man at least). In New" Zealand the species w"as reported diminishing as early as 
1873 (in 1876 seven thousand moulting ducks, mostly of this species, w’ere caught on 
one lake in three days, in the Bay of Plenty district), but even at that time it was 
receiving the protection of the Colonial Government, w"ith the result that in 1905 it 
w’as holding its ground (Hutton and Drummond, 1905). Colonel Cradock (1904) 
estimated that it comprised 80% of all the wild ducks in the country. The Mallard 
