Peter Scott Prints

Three Pintails at Dusk

The pintail is the gentleman jockey, the society aviator, the peerless knight. Peter Scott has caught him beautifully here, coming in at dusk, his streamline body and long, sharp tail as full of function and modern design as a jet fighter.

He is neat but not gaudy, the pintail is, and he is fast as anything needs to be. A big drake is as big as a little goose, and he is not oversuspicious, while not being too stupid, either. His eating habits are as impeccable as his neat herringbone clothing of gentleman's quiet black, white and gray. He will not fill himself on fish when your back is turned, as will that gourmet's darling, the canvasback.

His belly flashes as white in the sun as a gentleman's dress weskit, and he whistles through the air as cleanly as a rocket. He will swirl and turn over a blind, and give you a faultless lesson in aerobatics. He is such a fine and beautiful bird that he who first named him called him Dafila acuta. Dafila doesn't mean anything, really. It was just the prettiest name the scientist could think up at the time. Peter Scott named a daughter Dafila for the same reason.

The pin comes from a huge family. There are probably as many of him as there are of any one group of ducks. He occurs in Africa and Asia and Europe as well as America. He even crops up in the South Indian Ocean.

There is no sight, to my mind, as thrilling as the vast blankets of pintails that trade high against a winter blue sky, whistling like jets as they pass, and wheeling with the sun bright on their bellies. The pintail is no solitary speedster. He takes his family and friends along with him in the wild upstairs. Flocks of several hundred aren't a rarity.

While slightly less foolish than the mallard, and less skeptical than the black duck, the pintail will decoy well, especially very early in the morning. But you have to work on a pintail to get him to come down and in, and while he will come in he is reasonably chary about sitting down, except under certain conditions. But here again he is the perfect duck to shoot - he will come close enough to give you a whack at him while still demanding that you call him right and shoot him for the maximum in sporting shooting. No sitting duck, this one - not where I've known him.

Pintails at breeding time, such as in Manitoba, are something to see. A couple of lusty drakes will take off after a duck, and there is no contrived course in modern aviation to match their maneuvers.

This is what Peter Scott has captured on his canvas. He has two drakes here, tired from pursuing the same duck, coming in to the pool at dusk, with their colors softened and mellowed by the evening light. You can tell, from this painting, that Mr. Scott is a pintail man, even if he hadn't named his daughter after the bird.

Description of 'Three Pintails at Dusk' from notes accompanying the ‘Field & Stream’ Portfolio of Six Prints of Waterfowl Paintings by Peter Scott.