CHAPTER III. 



DUCK. 



"The wild geese wing o'er the isles their way." So 

 says a poet in the Shi King and having seen them go we 

 may turn to the ducks, many of whom are not in so great a 

 hurry. Some are even now coming to us from the south. 

 In all probability the sportsman in this part of the world 

 sees during the year a hundred times as many ducks as he 

 does geese, if under the term ducks we place the multitudin- 

 ous varieties which may bear the name. The province of 

 Kiangsu is an ideal home for them. "Water water, every- 

 where ", and rarely any ice to speak of. The vast extent of 

 the Yangtze estuary, the long line of coast stretching round 

 to the Hangchow Bay, with its immense mudflats, the lake 

 district about Soochow, culminating in the Tai Hu, whose 

 waters alone would cover more acres probably than all the 

 lakes and ponds of England, the vast marshes here and there, 

 and finally the thousands of miles of creeks, form a paradise 

 for ducks and water birds generally. No wonder we see 

 them by the thousand. English sportsmen go across to 

 Holland for the express purpose of finding similar, though 

 far less perfect, conditions. 



Not being tied by any trammels of logic we may con- 

 veniently range the ducks most frequently coming into our 

 ken into the two classes, Divers and Non-divers, or those 

 who seek food under, and those who find it on or near the 

 surface of water. The latter are by far the more numerous. 

 They are all night-feeders, spending the day either at sea or 

 in some safely secluded spot inland. In the following notes, 

 the numbers in brackets refer to the usual length of the 

 adult male given in inches. 



We will begin with the mallard, or wild duck proper. 

 < AnasboschnsJ (24) There is nothing in nature more beautiful 

 in its way than the male of this species. Note his beautifully 

 curved green head, the ruddy brown of his graceful neck with 

 its white collar, his blue wing coverts, the crisp curl of his tail 

 and the general charm of his white plumage, and then say 

 if you ever saw anything more fitted to adorn the foreground 

 of a picture of sea and land. He loses all this beauty, by 

 the way, when family cares come on, but dons it again with 



