266 
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, Uh-o-o-o, tuho-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 great 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 he 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 Kegent’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. When stationed years ago at Wanganui, as Eesident 
Magistrate, I kept in my garden several pairs which had become perfectly tame. I ultimately 
presented them to Sir George Grey, and they were then removed to the island of Kawau, where, in 
the enjoyment of a larger amount of freedom, they soon commenced to breed. 
On one occasion, when I was staying at Omahu, in the Hawke’s Bay district, the natives brought 
in a Paradise Duck, apparently in perfect health, but having only one wing, the other having been 
shot away at the junction at some former period, and the wound having then healed over. 
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 dis- 
covering the ruse it had so successfully practised. Mr. Travers refers to this subject, in a communi- 
cation to the Wellington Philosophical Society f, in the following terms : — 
“ The Paradise Duck breeds from October to January, and not unfrequently rears two broods 
during the season. I have, in fact, more than once seen two broods of different ages running with 
the same pair of parent birds. The single broods vary in number, the largest I ever saw being ten. 
Both parents are anxious and watchful about their young, resorting to the ruse of pretendmg 
lameness and inability to rise from the ground, in order to draw off any animal which they think 
* Writing of this species, Darwin says, in his ‘ Descent of Man ’ (footnote p. 479) : “ The New-Zealand Sheldrake offers 
a quite anomalous case ; the head of the female is pure white, and her back is redder than that of the male ; the head of the male 
is of a rich dark hazel colour, and his hack is clothed with finely pencilled slate-coloured feathers, so that altogether he may he 
considered as the more beautiful of the two. He is larger and more pugnacious than the female, and does not sit on the eggs. 
So that in aU these respects this species comes under our first class of cases; but Mr. Solater (Proo. Z. S. 1866, p. 150) was much 
surprised to observe that the young of both sexes, when about three months old, resembled in their dark heads and necks the 
adult males, instead of the adult females, so that it would appear in this case that the females have been modified, while the males 
and the young have retained a former state of plumage.” 
t Trans. N.-Z. Inst. 1871, vol. iv. p. 207. 
