The duck is smaller and duller in her general coloring, but still bears sufficient resemblance to the splendid drake to cause her at once to be recognized, by any moderately observant eye, as his mate.
Her bill is blackish brown, the irides of her eyes hazel brown, her feet dull dusky green. Crown of her head and hind neck dusky, faintly glossed with green, and with the rudiments of a crest; cheeks dusky brown. A white circle round the eye and longitudinal spot behind it. Chin and throat dingy white. Shoulders, back, scapulars, wing-coverts, rump and tail brown, more or less glossed with green, purple and dark crimson. Primaries black, with reflections of deep cerulean blue and violet; outer webs silvery white. Secondaries violet-blue and deep green, with black edges and a broad white margin, forming the speculum or beauty spot. Upper fore neck, breast, sides and flanks deep chestnut-brown, spotted in irregular lines with oval marks of faint tawny yellow; belly, vent and under tail-coverts white, flanks and thighs dull brown.
The young males of the first season are scarcely distinguishable from the ducks.
The Summer Duck breeds, in New York and New Jersey, according to the season, from early in April until late in May; in July the young birds are not much inferior in size to the parents, though not yet very strong on the wing. I well remember on one occasion, during the second week of that month, in the year 1836, while out woodcock shooting near Warwick, in Orange county, New York, with a steady brace of setters, how some mowers who were at work on the banks of the beautiful Wawayanda, hailed me, and, pointing to a patch of perhaps two acres of coarse, rushy grass, told me that six ducks had just gone down there. I called my dogs to heel, and walked very gingerly through the meadow, with my finger on the trigger, expecting the birds to rise very wild; but to my great surprise reached the end of the grass, on the rivulet’s margin, without moving any thing.
The men still persisted that the birds were there; and so they were, sure enough; for on bidding my setters hold up I soon got six dead points in the grass, and not without some trouble kicked up the birds, so hard did they lay. It was a calm, bright summer’s day, not a duck rose above ten feet from me, and I bagged them all. They proved to be the old duck and five young birds of that season, but in size the latter were quite equal to the mother bird.
I consider the Summer Duck at all times rather a less shy bird than its congeners, though it may be that this is owing to the woody covert which, unlike others of its tribe, it delights to frequent; and which perhaps acts in some degree as a screen to its pursuer; but except on one other occasion I never saw any thing like the tameness of that brood.
The other instance occurred nearly in the same place, and in the same month, I think, of the ensuing year. I was again out summer cock shooting, and was crossing a small, sluggish brook, of some twelve or fourteen feet over, with my gun under my arm, on a pile of old rails, which had been thrown into the channel by the haymakers, to make an extemporaneous bridge for the hay teams; when on a sudden, to my very great wonderment, and I must admit to my very considerable flusteration likewise, almost to the point of tumbling me into the mud, out got a couple of Wood Ducks from the rails, literally under my feet, with a prodigious bustle of wings and quacking. If I had not so nearly tumbled into the stream, ten to one I should have shot too quickly and missed them both; but the little effort to recover my footing gave me time to get cool again, and I bagged them both. One was again the old duck, the other a young drake of that season.
In the spring, the old duck selects her place in some snug, unsuspicious looking hole in some old tree near the water edge, where, if unmolested, she will breed many years in succession, carrying down her young when ready to fly, in her bill, and placing them in the water. The drake is very attentive to the female while she is laying, and yet more so while she is engaged in the duties of incubation; constantly wheeling about on the wing among the branches, near the nest on which she is sitting, and greeting her with a little undertoned murmur of affection, or perching on a bough of the same tree, as if to keep watch over her.
The following account of their habits is so true, and the anecdote illustrating them so pretty and pleasing, that I cannot refrain from quoting it, for the benefit of those of my readers who may not be so fortunate as to have cultivated a familiar friendship with the pages of that eloquent pioneer of the natural history of the woods and wilds and waters of America, the Scottish Wilson, who has done more for that science than any dead or living man, with the sole exception of his immortal successor, the great and good Audubon; and whose works will stand side by side with his, so long as truthfulness of details, correctness of classification, eloquence of style, and a pure taste and love for rural sounds and sights shall command a willing audience. Speaking of this bird he says—
“It is familiarly known in every quarter of the United States, from Florida to Lake Ontario, in the neighborhood of which latter place I have myself met with it in October. It rarely visits the seashore, or salt marshes, its favorite haunts being the solitary, deep, and muddy creeks, ponds and mill-dams of the interior, making its nest frequently in old hollow trees that overhang the water.