Nature’s Big, Black Ducks

COURTESY DON FAULKNER
In one of the later chapters of James Fenimore Cooper’s The Deerslayer, Natty Bumppo and Chingachgook have a shooting contest. Bumppo is called “Deerslayer” by the Delawares because he has such deadly aim with a rifle and consequently is known as a great hunter. The plot of the novel is the story of Bumppo’s first warpath; he must now shoot other human beings. Fenimore Cooper was a romantic writer, so the Native Americans are all “noble savages.” After Bumppo outshoots his first Huron warrior, the brave takes a dramatically long time to die, during which elegiac interval he renames Bumppo “Hawkeye,” as more befitting a fellow warrior.

The occasion of the shooting contest comes just before Deerslayer must return to the Hurons, who will likely torture him to death. In more Romantic nonsense, the Hurons have captured him but then “furloughed” him to deliver a message to his friends, knowing that he will return on his honor. Bumppo is of course manful about this, but right before he must return his love interest, Judith Hutter, gives him the gift of a new rifle and he spontaneously challenges Chingachgook, ostensibly to test the quality of the rifle.

The novel is set on Otsego Lake in the 1740s, when the region around modern Cooperstown (site of the Baseball Hall of Fame) was the frontier, a wilderness wandered by indigenous people, wildlife and few trappers. Fenimore Cooper, writing a century later, eulogized the plenty of this era. “At this distant day, when so few men were present to derange the harmony of the wilderness, all the smaller lakes with which the interior of New York so abounds were places of resort for the migratory aquatic birds, and this sheet, like the others, had once been much frequented by all the varieties of duck, by the goose, the gull, and the loon.”

Fenimore Cooper spent the first 13 years of his life—through the 1790s—at Cooperstown, when it was still the frontier. The successful author returned there in 1834 to live the last 15 years of his life.

In 1841, in The Deerslayer, he wrote that the numbers of birds had diminished. In earlier days it was not unusual to see hundreds on the water at one time.

Chingachgook misses a loon because it dives between the sound of the shot and the time the bullet takes to reach it (remember, this is a romantic novel). Deerslayer kills it as it surfaces. The Delaware chief then wings “a big, black duck,” and Bumppo puts it out of its misery by severing its head with a single bullet. Finally, Chingachgook misses a hovering osprey because it is just too high up and directly overhead. With the rifle “Killdeer” he has just received from Judith, Bumppo shoots it through the chest at an impossible height and it falls mortally wounded to the deck of the scow where they stand. Moved by the sight of the dying “eagle,” Bumppo realizes the vanity of the contest and repents his actions, vowing never to do such a wasteful thing again. Fenimore Cooper sums up the history of hunting in America in a page and a half.

All three of those species, of course, declined precipitously into the 20th century. Loons and ospreys, both being fish eaters, are not good to eat. They were badly depleted by more modern means than shooting. Black ducks, on the other hand, are delicious and were hunted without quota until the Weeks-McLean Act was passed in 1913, the first federal legislation that regulated the shooting of migratory birds. It was soon superseded by the tougher Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918.

The black duck (Anas rubripes) has a broad range and has never been endangered. Its numbers were depleted by unregulated hunting, but not more than other waterfowl species. Perhaps less so, because it has a reputation for being wary and a fast flier. It breeds from Saskatchewan to Labrador and southward to the mid-Atlantic states. In most of New England, except Maine, it is a year-round resident.

I flushed one earlier this week while I was exploring a large beaver pond south of the Pine Tree Trail in Wilmot, a part of the Sunapee-Ragged-Kearsarge (SRK) Greenway. In addition to being very dark colored, these ducks are large. But the largeness is bulk. They are the same size as a mallard—23 inches on average—but tend to be heavier. They are larger than all other species of dabbling duck: from 21-inch pintails to 14-inch green-winged teals.

They have a speculum—the colored rectangle on the secondary feathers—but unlike a mallard (and several other dabblers), it is not lined with white bars and is a dark iridescent blue. Female mallards (and males in eclipse) are lighter brown overall. Female black ducks have a dark olive bill and the males’ is greenish yellow. Female mallards have mottled orange bills and the drakes have bright yellow ones.

A. rubripes numbers are declining due to habitat loss, namely the draining of wetlands, inland ones where they breed and coastal ones where they spend the winter. Some researchers believe that hybridization with the abundant mallard may also be reducing black duck numbers. The hybrid animals are not as fit and have lower survival rates. Female birds that survive to adulthood to breed also have lower success rates. Because the mallard is so common—it is a habitat generalist—this phenomenon does not seriously decrease their population. But it may be eroding the numbers of the less common black duck.

Black ducks raise a single brood and breed as early as April and as late as June. Young born in June would just be learning to fly now. Post-breeding birds congregate in flocks to molt. They may or may not migrate. More northern migrating birds will reach New England by the end of this month.

Bill Chaisson has been a birdwatcher for 50 years. He lives and works in Wilmot. A collection of these essays is available at amazon.com.