When the spring freshet went down, and the rushes sprang green all
about the edges of the shallow, marshy lagoons, a pair of mallards
took possession of a tiny, bushy island in the centre of the broadest
pond. Moved by one of those inexplicable caprices which keep most of
the wild kindreds from too perilous an enslavement to routine, this
pair had been attracted by the vast, empty levels of marsh and mere,
and had dropped out from the ranks of their northward-journeying
comrades. Why should they beat on through the raw, blustering spring
winds to Labrador, when here below them was such a nesting-place as
they desired, with solitude and security and plenty. The flock went
on, obeying an ancestral summons. With heads straight out before, and
rigid, level necks--with web feet folded like fans and stretched
straight out behind, rigid and level--they sped through the air on
short, powerful, swift-beating wings at the rate of sixty or seventy
miles an hour. Their flight, indeed, and their terrific speed were not
unlike those of some strange missile. The pair who had dropped behind
paid no heed to their going; and in two minutes they had faded out
against the pale saffron morning sky.
These two were the only mallards in this whole wide expanse of grass
and water. Other kinds of ducks there were, in plenty, but the
mallards at this season kept to themselves. The little island which
they selected for their peculiar domain was so small that no other
mating couples intruded upon its privacy. It was only about ten feet
across; but it bore a favourable thicket of osier-willow, and all
around it the sedge and bulrush reared an impenetrable screen. Its
highest point was about two feet above average water level; and on
this highest point the mallard duck established her nest.
The nest was a mere shallow pile of dead leaves and twigs and dry
sedges, scraped carelessly together. But the inside was not careless.
It was a round smooth hollow, most softly lined with down from the
duck's own breast. When the first pale, greenish-tinted egg was laid
in the nest, there was only a little of this down; but the delicate
and warm lining accumulated as the pale green eggs increased in
number.
In the construction of the nest and the accumulation of the eggs no
interest whatever was displayed by the splendid drake. He never,
unless by chance, went near it. But as a lover the lordly fellow was
most gallant and ardent. While his mate was on the nest laying, he was
usually to be seen floating on the open mere beyond the reed-fringe,
pruning his plumage in the cold pink rays of the first of the
sunrise.
It was plumage well worth pruning, this of his, and fully justified
his pride in it. The shining, silken, iridescent dark green of the
head and neck; the snowy, sharply defined, narrow collar of white,
dividing the green of the neck from the brownish ash of the back and
the gorgeous chestnut of the breast; the delicate pure grey of the
belly finely pencilled with black lines; the rich, glossy purple of
the broad wing-bars shot with green reflections; the jaunty, recurved
black feathers of the tail; the smart, citron-yellow of the bill and
feet;--all these charms were ample excuse for his coxcombry and
continual posings. They were ample excuse, too, for the admiration
bestowed upon him by his mottled brown mate, whose colours were
obviously designed not for show but for concealment. When sitting on
her nest, she was practically indistinguishable from the twigs and
dead leaves that surrounded her.
Having laid her egg, the brown duck would cover the precious contents
of the nest with twigs and leaves, that they might not be betrayed by
their conspicuous colour. Then she would steal, silently as a shadow,
through the willow stems to the water's edge, and paddle cautiously
out through the rushes to the open water. On reaching her mate all
this caution would be laid aside, and the two would set up an animated
and confidential quacking. They would sometimes sail around each other
slowly in circles, with much arching of necks and quaint stiff bowing
of heads; and sometimes they would chase each other in scurrying,
napping rushes along the bright surface of the water. Both before and
after these gay exercises they would feed quietly in the shallows,
pulling up water-weed sprouts and tender roots, or sifting insects and
little shellfish from the mud by means of the sensitive tips and
guttered edges of their bills. The mallard pair had few enemies to
dread, their island being so far from shore that no four-footed
marauder, not even the semi-amphibious mink himself, ever visited it.
And the region was one too remote for the visits of the pot-hunter. In
fact, there was only one foe against whom it behoved them to be on
ceaseless guard. This was that bloodthirsty and tireless slayer, the
goshawk, or great grey henhawk. Where that grim peril was concerned,
the brown duck would take no risks. For the sake of those eggs among
the willow stems, she held her life very dear, never flying more than
a short circle around the island to stretch her wings, never swimming
or feeding any distance from the safe covert of the rushes.
But with the glowing drake it was different. High spirited, bold for
all his wariness, and magnificently strong of wing, from sheer
restlessness he occasionally flew high above the ponds. And one day,
when some distance from home, the great hawk saw him and swooped down
upon him from aerial heights.
The impending doom caught the drake's eye in time for him to avoid the
stroke of that irresistible descent. His short wings, with their
muscles of steel, winnowed the air with sudden, tremendous force, and
he shot ahead at a speed which must have reached the rate of a hundred
miles an hour. When the swooping hawk had rushed down to his level, he
was nearly fifty yards in the lead.
In such a case most of the larger hawks would have given up the chase,
and soared again to abide the chance for a more fortunate swoop. But
not so the implacable goshawk. His great pinions were capable not only
of soaring and sailing and swooping, but of the rapid and violent
flapping of the short-winged birds; and he had at his command a speed
even greater than that of the rushing fugitive. As he pursued, his
wings tore the air with a strident, hissing noise; and the speed of
the drake seemed as nothing before that savage, inescapable onrush.
Had the drake been above open water, he would have hurled himself
straight downward, and seized the one chance of escape by diving; but
beneath him at this moment there was nothing but naked swamp and
sloppy flats. In less than two minutes the hiss of the pursuing wings
was close behind him. He gave a hoarse squawk, as he realized that
doom had overtaken him. Then one set of piercing talons clutched his
outstretched neck, cutting clean through his wind-pipe; and another
set bit deep into the glossy chestnut of his breast.
For several days the widowed duck kept calling loudly up and down the
edges of the reeds--but at a safe distance from the nest. When she
went to lay, she stayed ever longer and longer on the eggs, brooding
them. Three more eggs she laid after the disappearance of her mate,
and then, having nine in the nest, she began to sit; and the open
water beyond the reed fringes saw her no more.
At first she would slip off the nest for a few minutes every day, very
stealthily, to feed and stretch and take a noiseless dip in the
shallow water among the reeds; but as time went on she left the eggs
only once in two days. Twice a day she would turn the eggs over
carefully, and at the same time change their respective positions in
the nest, so that those which had been for some hours in the centre,
close to her hot and almost naked breast, might take their turn in the
cooler space just under her wings. By this means each egg got its fair
share of heat, properly distributed, and the little life taking shape
within escaped the distortion which might have been caused by lying
too long in one position. Whenever the wary brown mother left the
nest, she covered the eggs with down, now, which kept the warmth in
better than leaves could. And whenever she came back from her brief
swim, her dripping feathers supplied the eggs with needed moisture.
It is a general law that the older an egg is the longer it takes to
hatch. The eggs of the mallard mother, of course, varied in age from
fifteen days to one before she began to sit. This being the case, at
the end of the long month of incubation they would have hatched at
intervals covering in all, perhaps, a full day and a half; and
complications would have arisen. But the wise mother had counteracted
the working of the law by sitting a little while every day. Therefore,
as a matter of fact, the older eggs got the larger share of the
brooding, in exact proportion; and the building of the little lives
within the shells went on with almost perfect uniformity.
During the long, silent month of her patient brooding, spring had
wandered away and summer had spread thick green and yellow lily blooms
all over the lonely meres. A bland but heavy heat came down through
the willow tops, so that the brown duck sometimes panted at her task,
and sat with open bill, or with wings half raised from the eggs. Then,
one night, she heard faint tappings and peepings beneath her. Sturdy
young bills began chipping at the inside of the shells, speedily
breaking them. Each duckling, as he chipped the shell just before the
tip of his beak, would turn a little way around in his narrow
quarters; till presently the shell would fall apart, neatly divided
into halves; and the wet duckling, tumbling forth, would snuggle up
against the mother's hot breast and thighs to dry. Whenever this
happened, the wise mother would reach her head beneath, and fit the
two halves of shell one within the other, or else thrust them out of
the nest entirely, lest they should get slipped over another egg and
smother the occupant. Sometimes she fitted several sets of the empty
shells together, that they might take up less room; and altogether she
showed that she perfectly understood her business. Then, late in the
morning, when the green world among the willows and rushes was still
and warm and sweet, she led her fluffy, sturdy brood straight down to
the water, and taught them to feed on the insects that clung to the
bulrush stalks.