A small duck.

October 10.



A young man has just shown me a small duck which he shot in the river from my boat.

I thought it a blue-winged teal, but it has no distinct beauty-spot.

The bill broad and, I should say from remembrance, bluish-black, as are the legs and feet, not red or yellow or flesh-color, webbed.  Above black and brown with no bright colors or distinct white; neck brown beneath and breast; secondaries pale-bluish, tipped with white; a little greenish perhaps on the scapulars.

Mr. William Allen, now here, tells me that when, some years ago, a stream near his house in East Bridgewater, emptying into the Taunton River, was drained, he found a plant on the bottom very similar to a sponge — of the same form and color — and say six inches wide.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 10, 1855

I thought it a blue-winged teal. See March 18, 1855 ("Meanwhile a small dark-colored duck, all neck and wings, a winged rolling-pin, went over,--perhaps a teal.");  October 8, 1857 ("Four dark-colored ducks (white beneath), maybe summer, or teal (??)"); November 11, 1858 ("Going by the willow-row above railroad, scare up a small duck, —perhaps teal,"); September 22, 1852 ("Has been a great flight of blue-winged teal this season."); September 20, 1856 ("Melvin says that there are many teal about the river now.")