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. Black Duck with young.
1903
June 14
As I was returning to Lakeside in my canoe, late yester-
day afternoon, I surprised a mother Black Duck with her brood of
six young (which appeared to be about a week old) swimming close
to a bed of half-submerged grass not far from Peaslie's spring.
The young scattered at the first alarm and running on the surface
of the water, after the interesting manner of all young wild ducks,
quickly disappeared among the grass. The mother rose with loud
quacking and flying rather heavily or, at least, slowly, circled
around me just out of gunshot, finally alighting some distance off
and well to one side of my course. It was raining at the time and
there was a strong southeast wind before which I was scudding under
reefed sail.
As I approached the same place this evening, paddling
quietly over the calm surface, I heard the thin, feeble peeping of
the young which appeared to be well scattered among the flooded
grass. Peep-peep-peep-peep-peep-peep they called to one another
(or to their parent) almost exactly like young tame Ducks. Pre-
sently the mother rose at some distance off, close to the edge of
the woods. Somewhat to my surprise she adopted tactics wholly
different from those which she pursued last evening. On the pre-
sent occasion she preceded me for a considerable distance, by a
succession of short flights alighting each time directly in line
with my course in open water and taking wing again just before I
got within long gun range. It seemed to me quite evident that she
was trying to lure me away from her young, but, if so, she made no
attempt to simulate the actions of a wounded bird.
42