A History of the Call Duck and its Colours
The modern Call duck is the smallest breed of domestic duck,
weighing only 1-1½lbs. The original Call ducks were literally
developed as calling ducks, to call down the wild mallard to the
great traps or decoys of the marshes. They were first known as the
decoy duck, the name coming from the Dutch word 'de kooi' meaning
‘trap or cage'.
The idea of the Decoy (de Kooi) duck and the pipe or decoy trap was
pioneered on the continent in Flanders. The oldest surviving decoy
was built in 1318 in East Flanders at Castle Marnix de
Sainte-Aldegonde, Bornem, and is still in existence today (1).
The traps were known as eendekooi in Holland (meaning duck cage). De
kooi, or eendekooi became ‘decoy’ in English and the name was
applied to the tame ducks which entrapped the wildfowl. These early
Decoy ducks are not thought to have been defined by type, but by
training. Kenneth Broekman (from Holland) confirms that the owner of
a duck trap, owned by one family since 1800, informed that call
ducks were never used. Tame mallards, who swim inside the polders,
and knew where to get their usual food, took other ducks along. The
other ducks they used were cage ducks; they remained in the eenden
kooi. Their presence was to attract other ducks. Call ducks were
never used because their loud noise (panic) kept wild ducks away.
Modern Call ducks
First standardized in the UK in 1865, their origin is known to be
Dutch - but where did the Dutch get them? Horst Schmidt (2) notes
that Calls seem to have become popular in Holland round about the
year 1800 and that they became widespread within quite a short
period of time. This perhaps indicates that they were not developed
in Europe, but arrived ‘ready-made’ from the Far East after the
Dutch acquired the Dutch East Indies. It was surmised that ducks had
probably been kept for centuries as ornamental birds in parks and
courts. The source of Schmidt’s information is likely to have been
Theo. van Gink (1932, 1941) who suggested that since the Dutch had
Japanese bantams as early as the seventeenth century, it was also
possible they brought back bantam ducks as well. ‘. . . we should
not be surprised if some day Japanese poultry and duck fanciers
might find in their old books information relating to some old breed
of dwarf ducks, especially as the Call duck’s type is very different
to the ordinary European type of duck to sport from it, and since
they bred so true it must be a very old-established breed’.
The problem remains to this day that evidence of the existence of
Call ducks has not been found in the Far East. The closest one gets
to them is the diminutive Laysan Teal from that Pacific island where
this dwarf mallard stock occur. Tiny and shrill-voiced, the Laysan
could perhaps have been the stock for the development of the Call.
Dutch Dwarf Ducks
Calls are substantially different from ‘normal’ ducks. They show
typical effects of genetic dwarfism. This idea is, of course,
apparent in their German name ‘zwergenten’. The dwarf gene may have
mutated in the Far East, but it could equally well have occurred in
Holland. Making a Call duck from scratch would have been a chance
event and made the type both novel and fashionable.
However, although it has been stated that Calls can be seen in
paintings of the old Dutch masters, many Dutch do not believe this.
There are small magpie-marked and bibbed ducklings. And that is what
they are – not Call ducks, but ducklings.
Although poultry artist van Gink says (1921) ‘We think we also
remember one or more Kwakertjes on an old painting of a Dutch master
from the 17th Century’, he does not seem to return that view.
Van der Mark, also from Holland, is quite definite: ‘On the many
paintings by old masters from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries,
such as Melchior d'Hondecoeter and Jan Steen, which contain a lot of
poultry, nothing can be found indicating the Dutch origin of the
Call ducks.’
d'Hondecoeter Subjects
It was quite common for similar-looking birds to crop up in
different d’Hondecoeter paintings from the 1600s. The same
magpie-marked and bibbed ducklings are in pictures at Burton Agnes
Hall (UK) and pictures from Mauritshuis published in Avicultura
2000. A pelican in the same pose is in both the St Petersburgh and
the Ashmolean Museum (Oxford) examples, and recurs in several other
works. This recurrence is not surprising, because it is thought that
the studio paintings were based upon sketches made from life, in the
open air. The sketches were then models for work in the studio on
several paintings in different settings. There is therefore no
guaranteed provenance for the subjects of the paintings: the
subjects could have been painted anywhere. The probability, however,
is that they were within Europe at that time, and that the birds
were in the waterfowl collections of rich estates.
A detail from another Burton Agnes painting is even more revealing.
Here, small stubby-beaked pied and magpie-marked ducks play in the
water beside a large crested duck. In the Burton Agnes painting, the
evidence is quite unequivocal: the duckling on the bank flaps its
un-fledged wings, and the accompanying grey-and-whites are ducklings
too; they are not adult ducks. Note that all ducklings – even Indian
Runners – tend to have cute short beaks. In the duckling, this
feature it is not diagnostic of the Call.
Ducks in d’Hondecoeter
Paintings
Take a close look at the d’Hondecoeter painting of the tiny ducks
(above)
and you will see why van der Mark did not regard these paintings as
evidence for early Dutch Calls. Quite often, small magpie-marked
birds are accompanied by Muscovies, and an examination of their
plumage shows no flight feathers on the wings, only young fluff and
stubby plumage.
The colours are wrong too. The ducklings with the Muscovy are black
and white like the adult Muscovy. A simple mutation produces the
magpie mutation in Muscovies. Mallards are different. They need a
combination of two pattern genes plus extended black which does not
seem to appear even in fully-grown ducks until the arrival of the
Cayuga, Smaragd (Emerald/Black East Indie), Duclair and Swedish
(where it is with the blue gene). The earliest recorded date for the
BEI is around 1831 (in ZSL records published 1832 [see 7]), but it
is uncertain where the pair came from.
