Grey Duck Nests on Banks of Avon.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 187, 8 August 1931, Page 8

Grey Duck Nests on Banks of Avon.

Nature Notes

By

James Drummond,

F.L.S.. F.Z.S.

'JMIE GREY DUCK, which ornaments the banks of the Avon and lakelets in the Public Gardens, usually nests on the ground, but occasionally in trees forty or forty-five feet high. There has been some discussion as to how the young ducks get from the tree-nests to the ground. They usually simply fall down, but, if they are too small to Climb out of a nest, they are carried down by an adult in its bill.

About twenty years ,ago, a nest was built in a large willow that overhung the Avon close to the Gloucester Street Bridge, in the grounds of the Provincial Council Buildings. Although young were reared in the nest, and it was carefully watched, the ducklings’ method of descending to the water was not discovered.

A flock of grey ducks on the city stretches of the Avon made a practice of coming on to the lawns when whistled for at regular intervala, and of accepting food offered by the proprietor of the Royal Hotel. Some of them crossed the busy street and walked on the lawn in front of the hotel. Few ducks are tamed as easily as grey d “ cks / u are as P alatabl «. few are regarded with greater favour by sportsmen, and no other duck is so plentiful in Xew ZeaJY* R - B. Oliver, director of the Dominion Museum, states that it is found wherever there is water—by mountain streams, in swamps, lakes and lagoons, on tidal estuaries and inlets, sometimes even on the sea off the coast. Its range extends Australia, Xew Guinea, Xew Caledonia, the Celebes, Tonga and Fiji.