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Victoria de Rijke - Duck

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Victoria de Rijke Duck

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The squat, noisy duck occupies a prominent role in the human cultural imagination, as evidenced by everything from the rubber duck of childhood baths to the flying ducks on living room walls. With Duck, Victoria de Rijke explores the universality of this quacking bird through the course of human culture and history.From the Eider duck to the Brazilian teal to the familiar mallard, duck species are richly diverse, and de Rijke offers a comprehensive overview of their evolutionary history. She explores the numerous roles that the duck plays in literature, art, and religion including the Hebrew belief that ducks represent immortality, and the Finnish myth that the universe was hatched from a ducks egg. This book also highlights the significant role humour has always played in human imaginings of duck life, such as the Topographia Hibernia, a twelfth-century tome contending that ducks originated as growths on tree trunks washed up on a beach. But we also learn about the birds role in everyday life as well, from food dishes to jokes to beloved animated characters such as Daffy Duck and Donald Duck. Duck is an entertaining account of a bird whose distinctive silhouette is known the world over.

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Duck Animal Series editor Jonathan Burt Already published Crow - photo 1
Duck

Picture 2

Animal

Series editor: Jonathan Burt

Already published

Crow

Fox

Camel

Boria Sax

Martin Wallen

Robert Irwin

Ant

Fly

Chicken

Charlotte Sleigh

Steven Connor

Annie Potts

Tortoise

Cat

Wolf

Peter Young

Katharine M. Rogers

Garry Marvin

Cockroach

Peacock

Horse

Marion Copeland

Christine E. Jackson

Elaine Walker

Dog

Cow

Penguin

Susan McHugh

Hannah Velten

Stephen Martin

Oyster

Swan

Elephant

Rebecca Stott

Peter Young

Daniel Wylie

Bear

Shark

Ape

Robert E. Bieder

Dean Crawford

John Sorenson

Bee

Rhinoceros

Butterfly

Claire Preston

Kelly Enright

Matthew Brower

Rat

Sheep

Jonathan Burt

Forthcoming

Philip Armstrong

Snake

Moose

Eel

Drake Stutesman

Kevin Jackson

Richard Schweid

Falcon

Hare

Helen Macdonald

Simon Carnell

Whale

Spider

Joe Roman

Katja and Sergiusz Michalski

Parrot

Pig

Paul Carter

Brett Mizelle

Tiger

Worm

Susie Green

Daniel Brass

Salmon

Pigeon

Peter Coates

Barbara Allen

Duck

Victoria de Rijke

REAKTION BOOKS

Published by REAKTION BOOKS LTD 33 Great Sutton Street London EC1V 0DX UK - photo 3

Published by
REAKTION BOOKS LTD
33 Great Sutton Street London EC1V 0DX, UK
www.reaktionbooks.co.uk

First published 2008
Copyright Victoria de Rijke 2008

All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publishers.

Page references in the Photo Acknowledgements and
Index match the printed edition of this book.

Printed and bound in China

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
de Rijke, Victoria
Duck. (Animal)
1. Ducks 2. Animals and civilization
I. Title
598.41
eISBN: 9781861894892

Contents

Preface Nature produces them contrary to her own laws in a most extraordinary - photo 4

Preface

Nature produces them, contrary to her own laws, in a most extraordinary manner. They are like marsh ducks but smaller. They grow in the guise of growths in the trunks of trees that have been washed up on the beach by the sea. As they grow, they hold onto the trunk with their beaks like seaweed adheres to the wood on the beach. Shells protect them so they can grow freely underneath.

What were these marvels? Ducks in a larval stage? Travelling through Ireland in the twelfth century, Gerald of Wales goes on to explain how over time the ducks become covered by a layer of feathers and drop off into the water or fly into the air. He insists that they feed on the sap from the sea itself, allegedly having seen more than one thousand of these little birds hanging from a tree trunk on the beach, lying under their shells and already formed. Gerald observes that certain bishops and prelates in Ireland eat these creatures during Lent because they are not made of meat.

Did Catholic priests, who had no intention of giving up their meat diets for Lent, invent vegetable ducks? A cunning excuse: birds called bernacae found in large quantities all over Ireland, justifying roast duck dinners all through Lent. In 1597 Gerards Herbal referred to the phenomenon again: the ducks special familiarity and ease on land, air or water offers richly confused interpretation:

This fowle vnknowen to the Auncients hath no certeine name amongst the Greekes... Amonge the Latynes... from the branded colour thereof callinge it Branta or Bernicula... In France they call it Crabans or Crauant or Oye Nonnette, the Germanes Baumganss, Wiewolanch, and the Scots Clakis. [It] liveth in fresh waters: sometimes aboue and sometimes vnder.

Claude Durets Portrait of tree with rotting branch which produces mould, then living, flying duck, from his Histoire admirable des plantes et herbes esmervillables & miraculeuse en nature (1605).

Sometimes above and sometimes under that is the prevailing mystery of duck - photo 5

Sometimes above and sometimes under: that is the prevailing mystery of duck existing in between the elements, in between reality and imagination, unstable creature that it is.

This book begins with a natural history. The term used to categorize duck tribe is not used with any other avian family but is instead found in plant taxonomy, referring us back to the medieval confusion cited above. We move from what science has classified to matters of more slippery duck and human interest, and tell a story which moves from facts on the duck fossil record, problems of taxonomy, habitat, feeding and migration, to the border territories of navigation, sociability, display and sexual behaviours.

Durets depiction of a tree from which fish or fowl are made depending on where - photo 6

Durets depiction of a tree from which fish or fowl are made, depending on where they fall.

Chapter Two examines wild duck hunting, domestication, and how ducks continue to be pressed into social organization. Chapter Three analyses associative human and duck sound and resulting metaphor and music. The discussion of a politicized relationship between ducks and humans is animated by Disneys Donald in chapter Four, while chapter Five explores duck shapes and entertainment. Chapter Six brings the book to a close with a review of ducks and doctors, ducks and disease, and ducks and meaning.

In a Mexican creation myth a great bird came whirling, and its feathers fell into the water, turning into all the waterbirds of the world. Duck came from one of those feathers. Another tale relates how the Iroquois hero Hiawatha, travelling through Mohawk territory, came to the edge of a great lake. As he was wondering how to cross it, a huge flock of ducks descended on the lake and began to drink the water. When the ducks rose up again, the lake was dry, its bed covered in shells. From these shells Hiawatha made the first wampum beads and used them to unite the tribes in peace.

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