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Dutch
Hook Bill (Hookbill) Ducks
Europe's oldest duck breed - with real character
The Dutch Hook Bill duck was a mystery to me when it
first seemed to ‘appear’ in
Britain
about 10 - 15 years ago. In fact, the older specialist ducks breeders
knew it well but the breed had ‘lapsed’, both here and on the
continent. That did not seem surprising. This really is a peculiar
looking duck. Not only does it literally have a hooked bill which forms
part of a curve around the whole of the top of the head, but its legs
are not set as squarely as in the mallard. This gives the Hook Bill a
characteristic funny walk. However, having acquired some of these birds
to really see what they are like, we are now really hooked on them. And
it’s not only ourselves. Once you have got these birds, they tend to
stay. Placid, docile, gentle and friendly, they are beautiful ducks with
real character.
See part of the article from the January 2006 edition of Smallholder magazine
(Copyright Chris & Mike Ashton) below
Europe’s oldest breed
The
Dutch masters, such as Jan Steen, painted many pictures of poultry and
waterfowl, and this is one of the ways in which information is gleaned
about our old breeds. Steen’s ‘The Poultry Yard’ (1660) depicted
white and mallard-coloured crested ducks, a fawn-&-white pied duck
and a bibbed. Melchior d’Hondecoeter (1636–1695) also portrayed
crested ducks, and he included a crested Hook Bill. Several of
d' Hondecoeter’s other paintings can be seen at the Rijksmuseum in
Amsterdam
, and in the National Museum of Wales at
Cardiff
.
The
first written evidence of Hook Bills may be in Willughby’s Ornithology of 1678 when the Hook Bill was described ‘as very like
the common duck, from which it differs chiefly in the bill, which is
broad, somewhat longer than the common duck’s, and bending moderately
downwards, the head is also lesser and slenderer. . .
it is said to be a better layer’.
Where
did it come from?
Nobody
really seems to now where the bird came from. Harrison Weir (1902) wrote
that the breed was of Eastern origin, citing
India
. The Dutch Historian van Gink also said that they were from the Far
East and there is a general acceptance in
Holland
that the most likely place of origin is East Asia from where they were
taken and brought to the
Netherlands
by Dutch seafarers in the ‘Golden Age’.
In
the 1700s, Hook Bills were kept by the hundreds of thousands in the
province
of
North Holland. The Dutch method of keeping ducks did not actually cost the owners
anything: the ducks went off in the morning to the rivers and canals to
find food and returned home before dark. The birds were expected to fly
quite a large distance to find their own food so, by necessity, they
could not be heavy.
As
in
Britain
, wild duck was a good source of meat. So it has been suggested that the
hooked bill itself may have been created from a natural mutation so that
the birds could easily be distinguished in flight from the wild mallard.
Hunters could then avoid shooting the domestic birds on their way home
at night when the mallard might be caught. To make their identification
in flight more certain, it has also been suggested that the white-bibbed
Hook Bill was created.
Hook
Bills in
Britain
Harrison
Weir described ‘bow-billed or hook-billed ducks’ which were kept on
the lake at Surrey Zoological Gardens between 1837 and 1840 when ‘they
were the ordinary colours, mostly being white or splashed with red,
yellow and brown or grey. The carriage was somewhat upright, and the
necks and bodies long and narrow’. He also commented that years after,
far better birds were shown at
Birmingham
; these were white with clear orange-yellow bills, shanks and feet and
had a top-knot towards the back of the skull. They weighed about 6 lbs.
Wingfield and Johnson (1853) also noted that white Hook Bills, imported
from Holland were the type most often seen, but coloured specimens were
not infrequent.
Since
then, references have been scarce but the breed did begin to make a bit
of a comeback in the 1990s. It will probably always be kept only by a
few waterfowl breeders and exhibitors, which is a pity. It is a good
layer if not too inbred.
More
information on duck breeds and duck management in The
Domestic Duck, Crowood press.
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