40 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIRDS 



pearance, swimming away in alarm, and now, when we 

 advance again, they rise and fly up-stream and about, 

 uttering regularly a crack cr-r-rack of alarm, even for 

 five or ten minutes, as they circle about, long after we 

 have lost sight of them. Now we hear it on this side, 

 now on that. 



[See also under Herring Gull, pp. 13, 15 ; American 

 Merganser, pp. 25, 34; Wild Goose, p. 60; General 

 and Miscellaneous, p. 418.] 



wood duck; summer duck 



Oct. 29, 1837. Two ducks, of the summer or wood 

 species, which were merrily dabbling in their favorite 

 basin [at Goose Pond], struck up a retreat on my 

 approach, and seemed disposed to take French leave, 

 paddling off with swan-like majesty. They are first-rate 

 swimmers, beating me at a round pace, and — what 

 was to me a new trait in the duck character — dove 

 every minute or two and swam several feet under water, 

 in order to escape our attention. 1 Just before immersion 

 they seemed to give each other a significant nod, and 

 then, as if by a common understanding, 't was heels up 

 and head down in the shaking of a duck's wing. When 

 they reappeared, it was amusing to observe with what a 

 self-satisfied, darn-it-how-he-nicks-'em air they paddled 

 off to repeat the experiment. 



Aug. 6, 1855. At Ball's Hill see five summer ducks, 

 a brood now grown, feeding amid the pads on the op- 

 posite side of the river, with a whitish ring, perhaps 



1 [Wood ducks do not commonly dive. Thoreau may have been mis- 

 taken as to the species.] 



