British Birds in Their Haunts

by C. A. Johns

In their habits they closely resemble their congeners, but are less graceful in their movements on the water, and spend a larger portion of their time on land.

THE COMMON SHELDRAKE
TADORNA CORNUTA

Head, throat, and upper back black, with green reflections; lower parts of the neck and back, flanks, rump and tail (except the black tip) white; from the shoulders a broad band of bright chestnut, which meets on the breast, passing into a broad, blotched, black band, which passes down the abdomen nearly to the tail; under tail-coverts pale reddish yellow; scapulars black; wing-coverts white; secondaries chestnut; primaries black; speculum bronzed green and purple; bill, and protuberance at the base, red; irides brown; feet crimson-red. The female wants the red protuberance on the bill, and the colours generally are somewhat less bright. Length twenty to twenty-two inches. Eggs white, tinged with green.

The Sheldrake is the largest and among the handsomest of the British Ducks, and if easy of domestication would be no doubt a common ornament of our lakes and rivers. It is, however, in Great Britain at least, a marine bird; though from one of its French names, Canard des Alpes, it would seem also to frequent the large continental lakes. Numerous attempts have been made to familiarize it with inland fresh-water haunts to which some other species readily take, but they have rarely succeeded, while to induce it to breed at a distance from its sea-side home has proved yet more difficult.

It differs from the majority of the Duck tribe in remaining on the coast of Britain throughout the year. In South Wales, for example, it is seen in winter and early spring, but about the breeding season it disappears for a few weeks. During this interval it is employed in incubation, but when its brood is hatched it is seen again, accompanied by a troop of ducklings, feeding in the creeks and marshy places. When thus discovered, the young broods are commonly hunted down by sea-side idlers for the sake of being sold to any one who cares to try the experiment of rearing them.

On the coast of Norfolk it is more usual to search for the nests, in order to secure the eggs and place them under a tame Duck or domestic Hen. The male and female keep together, not only during incubation, but until the young are able to provide for themselves. It derives the name 'Burrow Duck', by which it is also known, from its custom of making its nest either in the burrow of a rabbit or in a hole hollowed out by itself. The nest is constructed of such herbage as abounds in the neighbourhood; it is lined with down plucked from the breast of the parent bird, and contains from ten to twelve eggs.

Pennant (vol. ii, p. 257) says of these birds: "They inhabit the sea-coasts and breed in rabbit-holes. When a person attempts to take their young, the old birds show great address in diverting his attention from the brood; they will fly along the ground as if wounded, till the former can get into a place of security, and then return and collect them together."

From this instinctive cunning, Turner, with good reason, imagines them to be the chenalōpex, or Tox-Goose, of the ancients; the natives of the Orkneys to this day call them the Sly-Goose, from an attribute of that quadruped.

Sheldrake are more numerous during the summer in North Britain than in the South, but in winter they are driven by the freezing of their feeding-grounds to more temperate climates. Here numbers of them meet the fate of wild fowl generally, and specimens are often to be seen exposed in the English markets, though their flesh is held in little estimation as food.