Poling the sharpie against an ebb tide in one of the headwater creeks of Hempstead Bay, Long Island, I saw a small flock of Ducks drop into a pond some distance ahead. The banks were high enuf to let me "sneak up on 'em," which I did, carefully sliding the skiff into a bunch of reeds within fifty yards.
At first I thot they were Teal but a glimpse thru the glasses showed five SHOVELERS — two males and three females or young, staging a private circus. Around they went in single file, heads of each straight front with their extraordinary bills clipping audibly while they strained breakfast from the agitated water.
My gun lay on the seat but I was far too interested in the performance to think of using it — I was close to the point in life, anyway, when passing death to the other fellow on a shot-platter wasn't cricket. In half an hour they had gleaned all the minute crustaceans, copepods, diatoms and seeds in that pond which their specialized bills enabled them to sieve out, and disappeared into the September mist with a few subdued queeks of farewell.
In sloughs and rainponds of the western prairies they are more numerous and if unmolested become quite tame, sometimes even mingling with domesticated Ducks.
Temperate North America.