MALLARD . — Anas hose has. 
The common Mallard, or Wild Duck, is a truly handsome bird. 
It is the stock from which is descended our well-known domestic Duck, to which 
we are so much indebted for its flesh and its eggs. 
In its wild state the Mallard arrives in this country about October, assembling 
in large flocks, and is immediately persecuted in every way that the ingenuity of 
man can devise. Sportsmen go out to shoot it, armed with huge guns that no 
man can hold to his shoulder, and have to be mounted on gimbals in a boat, 
thus bringing down whole clouds of birds at a discharge. 
The nest of the Mallard is made of grass, lined and mixed with down, and is 
almost always placed on the ground near water, and sheltered by reeds, osiers, or 
other aquatic plants. Sometimes, however, the nest is placed in a more inland 
spot, and it now and then happens that a duck of more than usual eccentricity 
builds her nest in a tree at some elevation from the ground, so that when her 
young are hatched, she is driven to exert all her ingenuity in conveying them 
safely from their lofty cradle to the ground or the water. Such a nest has been 
observed in an oak-tree twenty-five feet from the ground, and at Heath -wood, 
near Chesterford, one of these birds usurped possession of a deserted crow’s nest 
in an oak-tree. Many similar instances are on record. 
The eggs are rather large and of a greenish white colour. 
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