DUCKS 46- 



ber 25, 1915, and small numbers were seen at Nigger Lake and 

 in Duckers Bay, November 29 to December 4, 1915. 



The first migrants from the north arrive during the latter 

 part of October (October 21, 1889, Greensboro), and the 

 largest flights usually occur during November. The north- 

 ward movement takes place chiefly during March. A. Z. 

 Oberhaus, of Mobile, tells me that about April 1, 1911, at 

 Nigger Lake, above Hurricane, he saw an old female mallard 

 with small young. At Speigner Lake, Elmore County, in the 

 spring of 1914, Haygood Patterson saw the nest, eggs, and 

 young of a wild mallard. Brannon states that a small colony 

 nested in 1922 on the grounds of the Fusihatchi Country 

 Club, in Elmore County.* These are the only known in- 

 stances of this bird's breeding in the State. 



General habits. — Mallards feed exclusively in shallow ponds 

 and bayous and along the banks of rivers. They gather into 

 small flocks, usually numbering from 2 or 3 to 20. They ar& 

 rarely seen in the open waters of the sound and never come 

 anywhere near an artificial blind in such situations. They 

 are sometimes secured, however, by placing a few decoys in 

 the water close to the edge of a marsh, the gunner concealing 

 himself in a natural grass blind on the shore; or they may 

 occasionally be surprised by stealthily approaching their feed- 

 ing grounds either in a small skiff or on foot across the marsh. 



Food habits. — The food of the mallard has been exhaustive- 

 ly studied by McAtee in the Biological Survey, with the fol- 

 lowing results: Nine-tenths of the entire content of 1,578 

 stomachs was of vegetable origin; sedges (including bulrushes 

 and sawgrass) furnished the largest proportion (21.6 per 

 cent), the birds eating not only the seeds, but the stems, 

 leaves, rootstocks, and tubers as well; wild grasses composed 

 13 per cent of the food, and included wild rice, wild millet, 

 crabgrass, switchgrass, salt-marsh grass, and others; other 

 vegetable matter eaten by the mallard includes seeds of smart- 

 weed, pondweed, widgeon-grass, eelgrass, duckweeds, and 

 coontail, the rootstocks and buds of wild celery, and the tubers^ 

 stems, and seeds of wapato and its allies (Sagittaria). Seeds 

 and nuts of various trees and shrubs furnish a favorite food 



*Brannon, Peter A., Oologist, vol. 40, p. 45, March, 1923. 



