The young are just like domestic chicks, run with the mother as soon
as hatched, and stay with her until autumn, feeding on the ground,
never taking wing unless disturbed. In winter, when full-grown, they
assemble in large flocks, fly about sundown to selected
roosting-places on tall trees, and to feeding-places in the
morning,--unhusked corn-fields, if any are to be found in the
neighborhood, or thickets of dwarf birch and willows, the buds of
which furnish a considerable part of their food when snow covers the
ground.
The wild rice-marshes along the Fox River and around Pucaway Lake were
the summer homes of millions of ducks, and in the Indian summer, when
the rice was ripe, they grew very fat. The magnificent mallards in
particular afforded our Yankee neighbors royal feasts almost without
price, for often as many as a half-dozen were killed at a shot, but we
seldom were allowed a single hour for hunting and so got very few. The
autumn duck season was a glad time for the Indians also, for they
feasted and grew fat not only on the ducks but on the wild rice, large
quantities of which they gathered as they glided through the midst of
the generous crop in canoes, bending down handfuls over the sides, and
beating out the grain with small paddles.
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