CHAPTER XXX.
THE BRASS-EYED DUCK.
The whistler, whistle-wing, great head, garrot or brass-eyed is one of the few ducks that, to my knowledge, builds its nest in trees.
The Indians, who are noted for giving appropriate names, call this duck "arrow duck," on account of its quick passage through the air. They fly very swiftly, and it is only an expert gunner that can bring them down in succession.
I once had the rare opportunity of watching the doings of a female brass-eyed from the building of the nest to the time she placed the young ones on the waters of the lake. To watch the industrious little builder was a most interesting pastime and afforded me much pleasure. The tree selected was not, as one would suppose, immediately on the shore, but a bit back in the thick growth. Properly speaking, the tree was a stump, although a strong live one grew rubbing sides with it. The stump was on the south side of the green one, and thus protected from the north, and was about twenty feet in height.
On examination shortly after the duck began to lay, I found that the concave top had been lined with dead leaves, hay, clay and small sticks. After this one peep in at the architecture and the couple of eggs therein, I refrained from approaching the stump again, but continued my observations from a distance.
When the duck took to steady setting I could just see her head and bill over the edge of the nest. Regularly each evening during the period of incubation she would fly out onto the lake to feed, drink and plume herself. These absences from her duty lasted from twenty minutes to half an hour.
When the young were hatched I kept a strict and steady watch on her movements for the thought occurred to me, "How would they get to the ground?" But, like a good many other things, this riddle of the forest was made clear to me one evening near sundown.
I sat motionless in my canoe a little to one side of the direction of the stump. The lake was as calm as oil, and in a little while, after taking up my position, out flew the mother in a slanting way to the water, and hanging from her bill was one of the young ducks. This she quickly deposited on the lake and flew back to the nest, and made trips to and fro, until she had brought the whole of her brood which numbered seven.
A hen is a proud mother even with one chick; well this was a transported one with seven. She swam through the midst of them, around them, away from them and toward them, exhibiting the utmost delight. Finally she led them in toward the shore, the shadows of the woods shutting them out from further observation. While daily visiting my nets about the lake, I often encountered the brood, or saw them at a short distance and they continued to interest me.
One day the number of ducklings appeared fewer than ought to be and on counting them I found there were only five. Next day this was reduced to four, and a few days after, when next I saw them, there remained only three. However, the mystery of their disappearance was made clear to me on that same day, for while trolling past the ducks' feeding grounds a big maskinonge struck the hooks savagely.
Being alone in the frail and small canoe I had the utmost difficulty to successfully play and kill him, but was amply paid, for on cleaning the big fish we found in its maw one of my young ducks.
Thus was their mysterious disappearance explained, this, or some other large fish, was accountable for the brood's diminution.
While on the subject of the brass-eye I would wish to set the reader right in regard to the whistling noise they make, that is the male. The author of "Wild Fowl and Their Habits" asserts that this noise is made by their short sharp wings cutting the air in rapid flight. Were this the case the female would make the same sound, but no one ever heard this whistling from a lone female or a number of females.
It is from the male we get this; not from the wings, however, but from a gristly sac attached at the end of the wind-pipe, much the shape of the bag of the bag-pipes. From this he emits several different kinds of sounds, as I have often listened to when approaching a flock on a calm moonlight night in the mating season.
Another erroneous assertion by the same author is that the flesh is rank, fishy and hard. The old ones are, more or less so, on their first arrival inland in the spring. At the sea, as a necessity, they live on fish, but a month after reaching inland waters, where they feed on marine plants and roots, the color of the flesh changes. It also becomes juicy and is as good eating as black duck or teal.
The young ones, when full fledged, just before migrating to the sea for the winter, are excellent.
The French-Canadians call this duck the diver and the half-breeds of Hudson Bay the pork duck.
All the tricks of hiding attributed to this duck by Netlje Blanchan, author of the book from which I have taken the several names under which the duck is known to American readers, are quite true, and also other devices not enumerated. For instance, when wounded I have known it to dive and come up within a few yards of my canoe with its head under a water-lily leaf and there remain, quite motionless, until I noticed the center elevation of this single leaf and fired at a venture with the result that I killed the duck.
On another occasion I noticed a wounded brass-eye making toward the shore in very shallow water. The formation of the banks was such that it was impossible for it to land and hide. Nevertheless, toward that shore it had dived, and never appeared above water. Pushing the canoe quietly along with my gun ready in the other hand, I scanned every inch as I went. Along the beach there was a solution of mud almost as light as the water. The duck had passed under this and came to the shore in about five inches of water showing nothing but its bill on the beach, the entire body being covered with mud, the exact counterpart of that about it.
Although my canoe was within six feet of the bird, it never moved, and it was only by the closest scrutiny that I detected its presence.
With a good silent dog playing in front of a blind these ducks in the early spring will come within short range, as will the black duck and gray goose. They have keen eyesight and will work in from a quarter of a mile to investigate the dog. The dog of best color to attract ducks is yellow or yellow and white. A pure white is better than a dark colored, which latter only appears to scare them away.
[This is an interesting contribution, for it brings up a number of points about which there has been more or less controversy in the past, and one at least which is new to us. That Mr. Hunter's duck brought her young to the water in her bill is interesting and agrees with statements made years ago in _Forest and Stream_ by Mr. George A. Boardman, who quoted a Canadian informant as stating that the old birds brought their young from the nests to the water, carrying them in their bills, but that to transport the young for a longer distance, the birds carried the young pressed to the body by the feet, a description which is not altogether clear.
Mr. Hunter declares that the whistling noise made by the brass-eye does not come from the wings and that this noise is never made by the female, in this his opinion differs from that of many other writers. In his belief the labyrinth--an enlargement of the wind-pipe found in the male of most ducks and but seldom in the female--explains the whistling sound so commonly heard when these birds fly near us.
Food notoriously gives flavor to the flesh of ducks as well as other animals. On the sea coast, where it feeds on fish and perhaps shell fish, the flesh of the brass-eye or golden-wing is notoriously bad, but like Mr. Hunter, other authors have declared that inland the bird is excellent eating.
The observation of the destruction of the brood by the maskinonge is worth recording. Pike, pickerel, maskinonge and snapping turtles are notorious enemies of young duck.]