243 



whether reposing on the water or feeding on the shore, their strongly contrasted colours cannot 

 fail to arrest and please the eye ; such a scene in fact as that represented in our Plate must be 

 familiar to any one who has travelled at all in the country. 



In districts where it has been much molested it becomes exceedingly shy ; and it is then 

 impossible to shoot it except by stratagem. One bird appears to keep watch while its mate is 

 feeding ; and on the slightest alarm it sounds its note of warning, to which the other responds ; 

 and both then observe the strictest vigilance, taking wing on the first approach of danger. The 

 call-notes of the two sexes differ remarkably : the drake, with his head bent downwards, utters 

 a prolonged guttural note, tuJc-o-o-o, tuk-o-o-o ; and the duck, elevating her head, responds to 

 her mate with a shrill call, like the high note of a clarionet. 



Its habits resemble, in many respects, those of the Common Sheldrake of Europe (Casarca 

 rutila) ; and, like that species, it subsists to a large extent on tender grasses and other succulent 

 herbage. Its wings are armed at the flexure with a hard round knob, denuded of feathers, the 

 use of which, in the economy of the bird, I have not yet been able to discover. During the 

 moulting-season it is unable to fly, and, being a very indifferent diver, it is readily captured. Even 

 when thus taken in an adult state it is easily domesticated, and it has been successfully introduced 

 into England. It is to be seen, in all its beauty, on the artificial lake at Kew Gardens and on 

 the ornamental waters of several private estates in various parts of the country ; and it breeds in 

 the Zoological Society's Gardens in Regent's Park. I have kept them in New Zealand, and found 

 them easy to domesticate and very tractable. They require, however, constant access to a stream 

 or pond of water ; for if denied this privilege, they become subject to attacks of cramp, which in 

 the end prove fatal. On these occasions the bird entirely loses the use of its legs, and, lying flat 

 on its breast, flaps the ground violently with its wings in apparent agony. 



In selecting a breeding-place it displays some fastidiousness : generally speaking, the nest, 

 rudely formed of dry grass, and deeply lined with feathers and down, is placed among the reeds 

 and tussocks near the water's edge ; sometimes, however, it is situated on a rising ground at a 

 distance from its ordinary haunts ; and in one instance, in the Upper Manawatu, I found a pair 

 breeding in a small cavern in the face of a sandstone cliff overhanging the river. The eggs vary 

 in number from five to nine ; and occasionally there are more, Mr. J. D. Enys having met with a 

 nest containing eleven; they are of a regular oval form, measuring 2-6 inches in length by 1*9 in 

 breadth, perfectly smooth on the surface, and of a yellowish cream-colour. 



The ingenuity with which the old birds decoy intruders away from the nest or young is very 

 remarkable ; and I have myself been so completely deceived by a Paradise Duck feigning a disabled 

 wing, that I have followed it for a hundred yards or more, endeavouring to overtake it, before 

 discovering the ruse it had so successfully practised. Mr. Travers refers to this subject, in a 

 communication to the Wellington PhilosophicalSociety *, in the following terms: — 



" Both parents are anxious and watchful about their young, resorting to the ruse of pretend- 

 ing lameness and inability to rise from the ground, in order to draw off any animal which they 

 think likely to be mischievous. It is excessively amusing to see an old Duck waddling away as 

 if with the greatest difficulty, her wings drooping and flapped occasionally, in order to assist her 

 apparently struggling efforts to escape, whilst all the time she manages to keep in advance of even 



* Trans. N. Z. Instit. 1871, vol. iv. p. 207. 



