Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/222

212 this kind is a capital, the income from which is all clear gain, for the bird feeds itself and costs nothing. As soon as the eggs are laid the Northman appears with a great basket, into which he puts nest and eggs. The duck is deeply distressed over this unrighteous seizure of her property, and in her inexpressible agony flies out to sea to seek comfort with her mate. Whether he receives her with tender expressions of sympathy or with scoldings for her neglect of his warnings is still an unsolved problem; but it is certain that he becomes tender again toward her, and after a few weeks waddles back behind her to the same bay where she had been so badly treated. She again gathers straw and grass for the new nest; but how about its warm lining? The new down has not grown upon her in so short a time; what shall she do? There is no mother, not even a duck, that can not find her way out of a difficulty when the question concerns her offspring. Her breast is indeed bare, but her mate still has his full coating of down, and is now obliged to sacrifice it on the altar of affection. He cheerfully adapts himself to the unavoidable, and begins to strip himself. The process does not go on fast enough for the impatient duck, and she helps in the work, and both persevere in it till the drake stands out entirely bald. Then he flies away, and troubles himself no more about wife and nest, an indifference for which we need not blame him in view of his own forlorn condition. The duck herself also thinks of only one thing—her brood. She leaves the nest only once a day for a little while in the morning, to take her bath in the sea, plume herself, and get some food; but while attending to these details she does not forget to cover the eggs carefully with down, so as to keep them warm. Danger no longer threatens the brood from man, who generally takes good care of this hatching to preserve the species; but it is likely to come from birds of prey. Under these circumstances the practical value of the duck's simple duskily speckled coat is fully demonstrated. The color of its plumage agrees so well with that of the ground that it is very hard to distinguish the bird from its surroundings. It has happened to me more than twenty times to be standing directly over a nest and not remark it till I felt a gentle pecking at the feet, which the bird gave me by way of warning that I was approaching too near; for the duck hardly ever thinks of flying from man during the time of its brooding. I have frequently bent down over a nest, stroked the bird, and felt the eggs without its rising. The most it would do was to snap, as if in play, at my fingers.

A characteristic trait of the eider-duck is to have as many eggs as possible, whether they be its own or strange ones; it is a trait that is not found to exist to so great an extent in any other being. The sitting birds steal one from another whenever they have an opportunity. It is no uncommon occurrence, when one of them is away from her nest for a little while, for her neighbor to purloin three or four eggs, carry