Image from the Biodiversity Heritage Library.
Contributed by Harvard University, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Ernst Mayr Library.
| www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Transcription
Anas obscura.
Lake Umbagog, Maine.
1897. At evening Will rowed me over to the Outlet marshes.
Sept. 11. After looking about a bit and trying to find a place where
Ducks had been feeding we finally stopped near where we were
anchored last evening and pushing the boat into a bed of grass
(which was more than half submerged) lighted our pipes and
waited. It was not long before Black Ducks began to arrive
and alight on the flooded marshes. Most of them came singly
but one flock of a dozen or more settled somewhere behind us.
None came near us at first but we could see or hear them in
every direction. At times the whole marsh rang with the
quacking of the ducks and the hoarse, cracked voices of the
drakes. Nevertheless there were not very many in all - prob-
ablely no more than twenty or twenty-five. The single ones
called the loudest and oftenest but in no instance, so far as
I could make out, did they join any of the birds that answered
them. Each bird, indeed, seemed to have chosen a feeding
place that was to its liking and to be merely carrying on a
conversation in duck language with its friends in other parts
of the flooded marsh.
This had gone on for some time when Will whispered that
some Ducks were coming up behind us. Turning slowly I saw them
about seventy yards off directly in the middle of the pathway
of burnished silver cast over the rippling water by the full