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noun

Sheldrake n.

(Zool.) Any one of several species of large Old World ducks of the genus Tadorna and allied genera, especially the European and Asiatic species. (Tadorna cornuta syn. Tadorna tadorna), which somewhat resembles a goose in form and habit, but breeds in burrows. Note: It has the head and neck greenish black, the breast, sides, and forward part of the back brown, the shoulders and middle of belly black, the speculum green, and the bill and frontal bright red. Called also shelduck, shellduck, sheldfowl, skeelduck, bergander, burrow duck, and links goose. Note: The Australian sheldrake (Tadorna radja) has the head, neck, breast, flanks, and wing coverts white, the upper part of the back and a band on the breast deep chestnut, and the back and tail black. The chestnut sheldrake of Australia (Casarca tadornoides) is varied with black and chestnut, and has a dark green head and neck. The ruddy sheldrake, or Braminy duck (Casarca rutila), and the white-winged sheldrake (Casarca leucoptera), are related Asiatic species.

Any one of the American mergansers. Note: The name is also loosely applied to other ducks, as the canvasback, and the shoveler.

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Etymology of 'Sheldrake'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Sheldrake" Quotes from Famous Books

... the canoe would push its nose silently around a point, and I would see the heron's heavy slanting flight already halfway up to the tree-tops, long before our coming had been suspected by the watchful little mother sheldrake, or even by the deer feeding close at hand among the lily pads. Then Simmo, who could never surprise one of the great birds however silently he paddled, would mutter something which sounded like Quoskh K'sobeqh, Quoskh the Keen Eyed. At other times, when we ...

— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long

... the long marsh grass we found the ruddy sheldrake (Casarca casarca), and the crested lapwing (Vanellus vanellus). They were like old friends, for we had met them first in far Yuen-nan and on the Burma frontier during the winter of 1916-17 whence they had gone to escape the northern cold; now they were on their ...

— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews

... the fishes so ravenously that many of these die of repletion; the conical heaps of small stones on the river-shallows, one of which heaps will sometimes overfill a cart,—these heaps the huge nests of small fishes; the birds which frequent the stream, heron, duck, sheldrake, loon, osprey; the snake, muskrat, otter, woodchuck, and fox, on the banks; the turtle, frog, hyla, and cricket, which make the banks vocal,—were all known to him, and, as it were, townsmen and fellow-creatures; ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... beat her; when she saw him seize his bow to beat her she ran down to the river, and jumped in to escape death at his hands, though it should be by drowning. But as she fell into the water she became a sheldrake duck. And to this day the marks of the red stain are to be seen on her feet and feathers. [Footnote: Related to me by Noel Josephs, a Passamaquoddy. Notwithstanding its resemblance to Blue Beard, it is ...

— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland

Words linked to "Sheldrake" : hooded sheldrake, sea duck, genus Tadorna, hooded merganser, merganser, Mergus merganser americanus, Mergus albellus, Lophodytes cucullatus, duck, American merganser, Mergus merganser