FLYERS, SWIMMERS, AND DIVERS 241 



when he is truly beautiful to behold, and charmingly at- 

 tentive to his more sombre mate. By the time the au- 

 tumn migration has brought them over our borders, how- 

 ever, he has cast oflf many of his fine feathers, together with 

 his gallant manners, and closely resembles the duck in all 

 but character. He is ever a selfish idler, while she attends 

 to all the drudgery of making the nest in the marshy border 

 of the lake; of incubating from six to fourteen pale greenish 

 buff eggs during four weeks of the closest confinement; of 

 caring for the large brood and teaching the ducklings all the 

 family arts. 



Shovelers are expert swimmers and divers, though they 

 "tip up" rather than dive for food; they are good walkers 

 also, when we see them in the cornfields, and almost as 

 swift on the wing as a teal. Tooh, took, took, took, that an- 

 swers as a love song and the expression of whatever passing 

 emotion the ordinarily silent birds may voice, was likened 

 by Nuttall to "a rattle, turned by small jerks in the hand." 



Like most other ducks of this subfamily, the shoveler 

 is not common in the northern Atlantic states. Salt 

 water never attracts it; but, on the contrary, it rejoices in 

 lakes, sluggish rivers and streams, isolated grass-grown 

 ponds, and even puddles made by the rain. In the 

 sloughs and lagoons of the lower Mississippi Valley it is 

 still fairly common all winter, however much it is perse- 

 cuted by the gunners. 



"These birds migrate across the country to the western 

 plains where they nest," said Chamberlain, "from North 

 Dakota and Manitoba northward, ranging as far as 

 Alaska." In such remote places, where the hand of the 

 law rarely reaches the nefarious pot hunter, he happily 

 finds the ducks in the very prune of toughness. 



