[Illustration]
Shelldrake, or shellbird, is the name by which this duck is generally
known, though how he came to be called so would be hard to tell.
Probably the name was given by gunners, who see him only in winter
when hunger drives him to eat mussels--but even then he likes
mud-snails much better.
The name fish-duck, which one hears occasionally, is much more
appropriate. The long slender bill, with its serrated edges fitting
into each other like the teeth of a bear trap, just calculated to
seize and hold a slimy wriggling fish, is quite enough evidence as to
the nature of the bird's food, even if one had not seen him fishing on
the lakes and rivers which are his summer home.
That same bill, by the way, is sometimes a source of danger. Once, on
the coast, I saw a shelldrake tying in vain to fly against the wind,
which flung rudely among some tall reeds near me. The next moment
Don, my old dog, had him. In a hungry moment he had driven his bill
through both shells of a scallop, which slipped or worked its way up
to his nostrils, muzzling the bird perfectly with a hard shell ring.
The poor fellow by desperate trying could open his mouth barely wide
enough to drink or to swallow the tiniest morsel. He must have been in
this condition a long time, for the bill was half worn through, and he
was so light that the wind blew him about like a great feather when he
attempted to fly.
Fortunately Don was a good retriever and had brought the duck in with
scarcely a quill ruffled; so I had the satisfaction of breaking his
bands and letting him go free with a splendid rush. But the wind was
too much for him; he dropped back into the water and went skittering
down the harbor like a lady with too much skirt and too big a hat in
boisterous weather. Meanwhile Don lay on the sand, head up, ears up,
whining eagerly for the word to fetch. Then he dropped his head, and
drew a long breath, and tried to puzzle it out why a man should go out
on a freezing day in February, and tramp, and row, and get wet to find
a bird, only to let him go after he had been fairly caught.
Kwaseekho the shelldrake leads a double life. In winter he may be
found almost anywhere along the Massachusetts coast and southward,
where he leads a dog's life of it, notwithstanding his gay
appearance. An hundred guns are roaring at him wherever he goes. From
daylight to dark he has never a minute to eat his bit of fish, or to
take a wink of sleep in peace. He flies to the ocean, and beds with
his fellows on the broad open shoals for safety. But the east winds
blow; and the shoals are a yeasty mass of tumbling breakers. They
buffet him about; they twist his gay feathers; they dampen his
pinions, spite of his skill in swimming. Then he goes to the creeks
and harbors.
Along the shore a flock of his own kind, apparently, are feeding in
quiet water. Straight in he comes with unsuspecting soul, the morning
light shining full on his white breast and bright red feet as he
steadies himself to take the water. But _bang, bang!_ go the guns; and
_splash, splash!_ fall his companions; and out of a heap of seaweed
come a man and a dog; and away he goes, sadly puzzled at the painted
things in the water, to think it all over in hunger and sorrow.
Then the weather grows cold, and a freeze-up covers all his feeding
grounds. Under his beautiful feathers the bones project to spoil the
contour of his round plump body. He is famished now; he watches the
gulls to see what they eat. When he finds out, he forgets his caution,
and roams about after stray mussels on the beach. In the spring
hunger drives him into the ponds where food is plenty--but such food!
In a week his flesh is so strong that a crow would hardly eat it.
Altogether, it is small wonder that as soon as his instinct tells him
the streams of the North are open and the trout running up, he is off
to a land of happier memories.
In summer he forgets his hardships. His life is peaceful as a meadow
brook. His home is the wilderness--on a lonely lake, it may be,
shimmering under the summer sun, or kissed into a thousand smiling
ripples by the south wind. Or perhaps it is a forest river, winding on
by wooded hills and grassy points and lonely cedar swamps. In secret
shallow bays the young broods are plashing about, learning to swim and
dive and hide in safety. The plunge of the fish-hawk comes up from the
pools. A noisy kingfisher rattles about from tree to stump, like a
restless busy-body. The hum of insects fills the air with a drowsy
murmur. Now a deer steps daintily down the point, and looks, and
listens, and drinks. A great moose wades awkwardly out to plunge his
head under and pull away at the lily roots. But the young brood mind
not these harmless things. Sometimes indeed, as the afternoon wears
away, they turn their little heads apprehensively as the alders crash
and sway on the bank above; a low cluck from the mother bird sends
them all off into the grass to hide. How quickly they have
disappeared, leaving never a trace! But it is only a bear come down
from the ridge where he has been sleeping, to find a dead fish
perchance for his supper; and the little brood seem to laugh as
another low cluck brings them scurrying back from their hiding places.
Once, perhaps, comes a real fright, when all their summer's practice
is put to the test. An unusual noise is heard; and round the bend
glides a bark canoe with sound of human voices. Away go the brood
together, the river behind them foaming like the wake of a tiny
steamer as the swift-moving feet lift them almost out of water.
Visions of ocean, the guns, falling birds, and the hard winter
distract the poor mother. She flutters wildly about the brood, now
leading, now bravely facing the monster; now pushing along some weak
little loiterer, now floundering near the canoe as if wounded, to
attract attention from the young. But they double the point at last,
and hide away under the alders. The canoe glides by and makes no
effort to find them. Silence is again over the forest. The little
brood come back to the shallows, with mother bird fluttering round
them to count again and again lest any be missing. The kingfisher
comes out of his hole in the bank. The river flows on as before, and
peace returns; and over all is the mystic charm of the wilderness and
the quiet of a summer day.
This is the way it all looks and seems to me, sitting over under the
big hemlock, out of sight, and watching the birds through my
field-glass.
Day after day I have attended such little schools unseen and
unsuspected by the mother bird. Sometimes it was the a-b-c class, wee
little downy fellows, learning to hide on a lily pad, and never
getting a reward of merit in the shape of a young trout till they hid
so well that the teacher (somewhat over-critical, I thought) was
satisfied. Sometimes it was the baccalaureates that displayed their
talents to the unbidden visitor, flashing out of sight, cutting
through the water like a ray of light, striking a young trout on the
bottom with the rapidity and certainty almost of the teacher. It was
marvelous, the diving and swimming; and mother bird looked on and
quacked her approval of the young graduates.--That is another
peculiarity: the birds are dumb in winter; they find their voice only
for the young.
While all this careful training is going on at home, the drake is off
on the lakes somewhere with his boon companions, having a good time,
and utterly neglectful of parental responsibility. Sometimes I have
found clubs of five or six, gay fellows all, living by themselves at
one end of a big lake where the fishing was good. All summer long
they roam and gad about, free from care, and happy as summer campers,
leaving mother birds meanwhile to feed and educate their offspring.
Once only have I seen a drake sharing the responsibilities of his
family. I watched three days to find the cause of his devotion; but he
disappeared the third evening, and I never saw him again. Whether the
drakes are lazy and run away, or whether they have the atrocious habit
of many male birds and animals of destroying their young, and so are
driven away by the females, I have not been able to find out.
These birds are very destructive on the trout streams; if a summer
camper spare them, it is because of his interest in the young, and
especially because of the mother bird's devotion. When the recreant
drake is met with, however, he goes promptly onto the bill of fare,
with other good things.
Occasionally one overtakes a brood on a rapid river. Then the poor
birds are distressed indeed. At the first glimpse of the canoe they
are off, churning the water into foam in their flight. Not till they
are out of sight round the bend do they hear the cluck that tells them
to hide. Some are slow in finding a hiding place on the strange
waters. The mother bird hurries them. They are hunting in frantic
haste when round the bend comes the swift-gliding canoe. With a note
of alarm they are all off again, for she will not leave even the
weakest alone. Again they double the bend and try to hide; again the
canoe overtakes them; and so on, mile after mile, till a stream or
bogan flowing into the river offers a road to escape. Then, like a
flash, the little ones run in under shelter of the banks, and glide up
stream noiselessly, while mother bird flutters on down the river just
ahead of the canoe. Having lured it away to a safe distance, as she
thinks, she takes wing and returns to the young.
Their powers of endurance are remarkable. Once, on the Restigouche, we
started a brood of little ones late in the afternoon. We were moving
along in a good current, looking for a camping ground, and had little
thought for the birds, which could never get far enough ahead to hide
securely. For five miles they kept ahead of us, rushing out at each
successive stretch of water, and fairly distancing us in a straight
run. When we camped they were still below us. At dusk I was sitting
motionless near the river when a slight movement over near the
opposite bank attracted me. There was the mother bird, stealing along
up stream under the fringe of bushes. The young followed in single
file. There was no splashing of water now. Shadows were not more
noiseless.
Twice since then I have seen them do the same thing. I have no doubt
they returned that evening all the way up to the feeding grounds where
we first started them; for like the kingfishers every bird seems to
have his own piece of the stream. He never fishes in his neighbor's
pools, nor will he suffer any poaching in his own. On the Restigouche
we found a brood every few miles; on other rivers less plentifully
stocked with trout they are less numerous. On lakes there is often a
brood at either end; but though I have watched them carefully, I have
never seen them cross to each other's fishing grounds.
Once, up on the Big Toledi, I saw a curious bit of their education. I
was paddling across the lake one day, when I saw a shellbird lead her
brood into a little bay where I knew the water was shallow; and
immediately they began dipping, though very awkwardly. They were
evidently taking their first lessons in diving. The next afternoon I
was near the same place. I had done fishing--or rather, frogging--and
had pushed the canoe into some tall grass out of sight, and was
sitting there just doing nothing.
A musquash came by, and rubbed his nose against the canoe, and nibbled
a lily root before he noticed me. A shoal of minnows were playing
among the grasses near by. A dragon-fly stood on his head against a
reed--a most difficult feat, I should think. He was trying some
contortion that I couldn't make out, when a deer stepped down the
bank and never saw me. Doing nothing pays one under such
circumstances, if only by the glimpses it gives of animal life. It is
so rare to see a wild thing unconscious.
Then Kwaseekho came into the shallow bay again with her brood, and
immediately they began dipping as before. I wondered how the mother
made them dive, till I looked through the field-glass and saw that the
little fellows occasionally brought up something to eat. But there
certainly were no fish to be caught in that warm, shallow water. An
idea struck me, and I pushed the canoe out of the grass, sending the
brood across the lake in wild confusion. There on the black bottom
were a dozen young trout, all freshly caught, and all with the
air-bladder punctured by the mother bird's sharp bill. She had
provided their dinner, but she brought it to a good place and made
them dive to get it.
As I paddled back to camp, I thought of the way the Indians taught
their boys to shoot. They hung their dinner from the trees, out of
reach, and made them cut the cord that held it, with an arrow. Did the
Indians originate this, I wonder, in their direct way of looking at
things, almost as simple as the birds'? Or was the idea whispered to
some Indian hunter long ago, as he watched Merganser teach her young
to dive?
Of all the broods I have met in the wilderness, only one, I think,
ever grew to recognize me and my canoe a bit, so as to fear me less
than another. It was on a little lake in the heart of the woods, where
we lingered long on our journey, influenced partly by the beauty of
the place, and partly by the fact that two or three bears roamed about
there, which I sometimes met at twilight on the lake shore. The brood
were as wild as other broods; but I met them often, and they sometimes
found the canoe lying motionless and harmless near them, without quite
knowing how it came there. So after a few days they looked at me with
curiosity and uneasiness only, unless I came too near.
There were six in the brood. Five were hardy little fellows that made
the water boil behind them as they scurried across the lake. But the
sixth was a weakling. He had been hurt, by a hawk perhaps, or a big
trout, or a mink; or he had swallowed a bone; or maybe he was just a
weak little fellow with no accounting for it. Whenever the brood were
startled, he struggled bravely a little while to keep up; then he
always fell behind. The mother would come back, and urge, and help
him; but it was of little use. He was not strong enough; and the last
glimpse I always had of them was a foamy wake disappearing round a
distant point, while far in the rear was a ripple where the little
fellow still paddled away, doing his best pathetically.
[Illustration]
One afternoon the canoe glided round a point and ran almost up to the
brood before they saw it, giving them a terrible fright. Away they
went on the instant, _putter, putter, putter_, lifting themselves
almost out of water with the swift-moving feet and tiny wings. The
mother bird took wing, returned and crossed the bow of the canoe, back
and forth, with loud quackings. The weakling was behind as usual; and
in a sudden spirit of curiosity or perversity--for I really had a good
deal of sympathy for the little fellow--I shot the canoe forward,
almost up to him. He tried to dive; got tangled in a lily stem in his
fright; came up, flashed under again; and I saw him come up ten feet
away in some grass, where he sat motionless and almost invisible amid
the pads and yellow stems.
How frightened he was! Yet how still he sat! Whenever I took my eyes
from him a moment I had to hunt again, sometimes two or three minutes,
before I could see him there.
Meanwhile the brood went almost to the opposite shore before they
stopped, and the mother, satisfied at last by my quietness, flew over
and lit among them. She had not seen the little one. Through the glass
I saw her flutter round and round them, to be quite sure they were all
there. Then she missed him. I could see it all in her movements. She
must have clucked, I think, for the young suddenly disappeared, and
she came swimming rapidly back over the way they had come, looking,
looking everywhere. Round the canoe she went at a safe distance,
searching among the grass and lily pads, calling him softly to come
out. But he was very near the canoe, and very much frightened; the
only effect of her calls was to make him crouch closer against the
grass stems, while the bright little eyes, grown large with fear, were
fastened on me.
Slowly I backed the canoe away till it was out of sight around the
point, though I could still see the mother bird through the bushes.
She swam rapidly about where the canoe had been, calling more loudly;
but the little fellow had lost confidence in her, or was too
frightened, and refused to show himself. At last she discovered him,
and with quacks and flutters that looked to me a bit hysteric pulled
him out of his hiding place. How she fussed over him! How she hurried
and helped and praised and scolded him all the way over; and fluttered
on ahead, and clucked the brood out of their hiding places to meet
him! Then, with all her young about her, she swept round the point
into the quiet bay that was their training school.
And I, drifting slowly up the lake into the sunset over the glassy
water, was thinking how human it all was. "Doth he not leave the
ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost,
until he find it?"