Birds and nature in natural colors - being a scientific and popular treatise on four hundred birds of the United States and Canada (1913) (14775147063)

Identifier: birdsnatureinnat02chic (find matches)

Title: Birds and nature in natural colors : being a scientific and popular treatise on four hundred birds of the United States and Canada

Year: 1913 (1910s)

Authors:

Subjects: Birds -- North America

Publisher: Chicago : A.W. Mumford, Publisher

Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library

Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

Text Appearing Before Image:

byraising mallards for liberation. Male: Head and neck glossy green; a white ring around the neck; breast,chestnut; belly, dull white streaked with gray lines; back, brown; wings, graywith purple bars; upper tail feathers black and the lowest ones recurved; bill,greenish-yellow and feet orange. Female: Wings like male; belly, yellowish mixed with greyish-t)rown;other plumage dark brown with some buflf. Length, twenty-four inches. Nest, usually on the ground near a stream or lake, made of grass andleaves, and if in the far north, lined with down. Eggs, six to ten, greenish-white,2.30 by 1.60 inches. The Mallards are the wild species from which our domestic ducks werederived. They are common in the Northern Hemisphere of both the Old andthe New World. In America they winter in the southern states and southwardand nest mainly in Canada. They migrate slowly in flocks in early spring and late fall, often stoppingfor days by the way. They travel by night, and nest and feed in lakes and 322

Text Appearing After Image:

streams by day. While floating on the water, they frequently sleep with theirheads under their wings, always, however, leaving one or more of their numberon the watch for an enemy. They are very shy and take to the wing on thefirst alarm. Before alighting again, they wheel several times about the placeselected to make sure no danger awaits them. These ducks are killed in large numbers for food. They feed mostly atdawn and dusk, eating grain, mollusks and the roots of plants. Various methodsare used to get near them. Often decoys made of wood and painted to resembleducks are placed in the water to induce the flocks to alight. Hidden nearby onthe shore or in his boat the hunter is ready to shoot when the ducks, deceivedby the decoys, stop to rest. After incubation begins the male deserts his mate and leaves her to hatchand raise the young alone while he leisurely wanders about with other drakes.When the female leaves her nest to obtain food, she carefully covers her eggsboth to hide the

anas platyrhynchos illustrations birds and nature in natural colors being a scientific and popular treatise on four hundred birds of the united states and canada 1913 book illustrations ornithology birds zoological illustration natural history mollusks american museum of natural history high resolution images from internet archive

1913

American Museum of Natural History Library

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