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They have a bisyllabic rather plaintive note which is peculiarly fascinating to me and, like the honk of the Canada goose, awakens memories of sodden, wind-blown marshes, bobbing decoys, and a leaden sky shot through with V-shaped lines of flying birds. Mallards were frequently to be found with the sheldrakes, and we had good shooting along the river and in ponds and rice fields.
Moreover, like the lapwings, they had a trusting simplicity, a way of throwing themselves on one's mercy, which was infinitely appealing. We often hunted for the eggs of both the sheldrakes and lapwings. They must have been near by, we knew, for the old birds would fly about our heads uttering agonizing calls, but we never found the nests.
The red wallabies were very numerous, particularly in the kind of jungle along the river. Sheldrakes and Ibises abounded at the water-holes. Charley shot two wallabies. Oct. 26. We enjoyed most gratefully our two wallabies, which were stewed, and to which I had added some green hide to render the broth more substantial.
It was too early yet for the tide of travel which sends a score of boats up and down this thoroughfare every day; and from shore to shore the water was unruffled, except by a flock of sheldrakes which had been feeding near Plymouth Rock, and now went skittering off into Weller Bay with a motion between flying and swimming, leaving a long wake of foam behind them.
The same thing is noticeable among the sheldrakes also, namely, that each pair, or rather each mother and her brood, have their own piece of lake or river on which no others are allowed to fish. The male sheldrakes meanwhile are far away, fishing on their own waters. I had not half settled this matter of the division of trout streams when another observation came, which was utterly unexpected.
The eider ducks, or dunter geese, as we call them in Orkney, are always plentiful in the winter time, and valuable not only for their flesh, but also for their rich downy feathers, and I managed to procure a good number of these. Over at the fresh-water loch of Harray, too, several teals and sheldrakes were taken.
However, we were disappointed in the shooting for, although it appeared to be an ideal place for ducks and other water birds, we killed only five teal, and the great ponds were almost devoid of bird life. Even herons, so abundant in the north, were conspicuous by their absence and we saw no sheldrakes, geese, or mallards.
It is too dry for small mammals and the mountain slopes are so precipitous, thinly forested, and generally undesirable, that, except for gorals, no other large game would live there. The bird life is decidedly uninteresting. There are no cranes or sheldrakes and, except for a few flocks of mallards which feed in the rice fields, we saw no other ducks or geese.
The mud flats were dotted with hundreds of ruddy sheldrakes, their beautiful bodies glowing red and gold in the sunlight. A hundred yards from shore half a dozen swans drifted about like floating snow banks, and ducks and geese by thousands rose or settled in the lake.
Levin Dennis steered close to a point where he had been wont to scatter food for the black ducks, and draw them to the gunner's ambush. Sheldrakes and goosanders, coots and gulls, whifflers and dippers, made the best of Sunday, and bathed and wrote their winged penmanship on the white sheet of water.
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