S. A. Walton Limited Edition Prints- Reflections

REFLECTIONS

Wood Duck Drake
Dimensions 9 1/2 x 12 inches
Edition Size: 200

Price: US $ 30

The wood duck was a symbol of peace among the southeastern peoples of prehistoric North America, who used its feathers to decorate the stems of their tobacco pipes. On the floodplain of the Mississippi where I grew up, in the shadow of the great mounds of the ancient Mississippian chiefdom of Cahokia, a striking and elegant earthen vessel of a wood duck was found. The people of Cahokia had mastered many art forms, and one of these characteristic skills was the manufacture of wood duck effigy bowls which had rattles crafted right into the duck's hollowed out heads. What purpose these rattle bowls served, we do not know, but clearly the wood duck was just as important to the Mississippian Indians who preceded me on Illinois soil as it was to other southeastern Native Americans.

My first encounter with a male wood duck was on my farm in southern Missouri. I was very young; fishing at our little pond and heard a persistant piping sound emanating from some thick sandbar willows where the springfed creek dumped into the pond. I knew what it was from an earlier encounter with the female wood duck after I had investigated the curious noise earlier in the week, but as of yet I hadn't managed to spot a male and wasn't sure about the species habits so I wasn't even certain the male was still around. I went over to investigate this time because the noises were somehow different from what I had grown used to since I sighted the female. A bird darted from out and up from the brush, in glorious technicolor! Across the field it flashed, and so distracted was I that I stopped dead in my tracks. My experience with ducks up to that point had been the ordinary Peking white farm duck. They sounded nothing like the ducklings in my cattail patch, and certainly didn't match the wood duck in appearances. No bird in North America is a match for the wood duck drake in color and form.

The wood duck is not an uncommon sight, though decades ago it had nearly become extinct due to a lack of suitable nesting trees. The wood duck requires high and hollow nesting trees within reasonable distance of water, but in the early part of the last century such trees were often cleared away by industrious landowners. Thanks to individuals and to groups of concerned hunters like Ducks Unlimited, the wood duck species is no longer in danger.