Another loved and lovely denizen of these bogs is the wood duck. These breed in the swamp, the mother bird building a grassy nest in a hollow tree, where she lays from eight to fourteen buff-white eggs, and leads her yellow fluffy ducklings to a nearby secluded pool for their first swim. Later they come out into the bog, and ultimately make the pond, where they learn to forage for themselves. By the first of August the mother bird has sent them adrift, in the main, to paddle and flap their way about as best they may. They are “flappers,” as the boys call them. That is, they can make good speed along the surface by half running and flapping vigorously, but they cannot yet fly enough to rise into the air.
One of these young wood ducks came out of the bog the other morning, just at the gray of dawn, and swam over toward the boat landing. He was quite near the shore when I took ship and rowed to seaward of him, thus shutting him off from the open pond and from the bog. Then for an hour or two followed what was to me the most interesting duck hunting I have done for a long time. I could row as fast as he could swim, and I continually edged him along the south shore, getting nearer every minute. I have read much of the marvelous intelligence of wild creatures. Yet I saw little of it in this chase. The duck knew me for an enemy, on general principles, for I was a man, and I was evidently coming after him. Even rudimentary intelligence should have told him to flap for the bog as fast as he could. He did nothing of the sort. He just edged along down the shore, evidently hoping that I was light-minded, and would forget all about him in a minute or two if let alone. But I kept at it until I was so near I could see every one of his already handsome feathers and note the coloring of those parts which had not yet reached the beauty of maturity. I could see the yellow rim of his eye, and still he swam east and swam west but made no real move to escape.
Two things I wished to learn from my wood duck. One was how much general intelligence and real quickness of wit he would show in escaping. The other was how he carried his wings under water if, by any fortunate chance, I should be able to see him swim after he went down to escape me. But at first he was so irresolute that he neither dived nor made any vigorous attempt to escape. I got so near, that to avoid driving him up the bank into the woods I had to ease away a bit. Finally, at my second approach, he did try to flap by the end of the boat, but I spurted and headed him off.
It was a long time, and it took much manœuvring to make him dive, but it finally entered his head that he might avoid being cornered and badgered by going under water. This he did, going on a slant just a very little below the surface, probably because he was in too shallow water to go much deeper, and coming up well to seaward. There he preened his feathers, took a sip or two of water and, seemingly, waited to be surrounded a second time.
I rowed out, got on the off-shore side of him, and again began boating him in toward the shore. He showed less uneasiness this time, but dived and swam out again after considerable more pressing. Again and again I repeated this, sometimes getting no sight of him under water, again seeing him move along very plainly. At no time did I notice any motion of the wings under water. I have been told that wild ducks when swimming beneath the surface make most of their progress with their wings, quite literally flying under water. This may be, but I have no evidence of it in the under-water action of this one.
Again, it has been sagely impressed upon me by old duck hunters that you could tell in what direction from your boat a bird would rise by noting the way in which his bill pointed when he went under. I think it was Adirondack Murray in that famous loon-hunting chapter who first made the point, and it has been insisted upon by many another successor. But, bless you, my half-grown wood duck made no difficulty of going down with his head toward the morning and coming up in the sunset portion of the view. He took slants under water and cut semicircles at will. But I couldn’t see him use his wings while beneath the wave.
Little by little he got over being excited by my presence. He began to eat bugs off the lily pads as he went by, and now and then tip up for an under-water search. Thus we coquetted with one another all along the southern shore of the pond, and when I finally cornered him for a last time in behind Loon Island he dove without embarrassment and began his feeding as soon as he had again reached the surface. The chase was no longer exciting, and I turned my attention to something else. Then he swam out quite a little further into the pond, preened his feathers carefully, tucked his head under his wing and went to sleep!
Evidently he had decided that I was eccentric, but harmless, and the best way to escape my attentions would be to leave me severely alone.
And there you have it. I think the wood duck is beautiful, but not very bright. Yet it occurs to me that some Sherlock Holmes of the woods may prove, to the satisfaction of Dr. Watson anyway, that he is preternaturally clever, in that this one, though still young, was keen enough to see that from the first I had no evil intentions toward him.