There have been many versions of the Card Duck over the years. It was invented by Laurie Ireland c. 1932 and marketed by him as Otto, The Automaton Duck.
This was the first card Duck that I owned and Dickie was a featured part of my act when I was a teenager and well into my thirties, until he met with a fatal accident when he fell off the top of a storage unit 🙁 I purchased Dickie from Ron MacMillan’s International Unique Magic Studio. For years I thought Dickie was a Warren Hamilton: Jo-Anne Duck with a different name and routine, until I purchased a genuine one and could see the differences. To be honest the main significant difference was that the paint job was much better on the Hamilton version, but the actual motion and pecking action I thought was smoother with the Chavel version.
Performing Dickie for over 40 years helped me realize that it really doesn’t matter what the prop looks like as all the magic emanates from the performer. It helps if the duck can actually pick the cards smoothly on queue, but most of the other tweaks and improvements pale when compared with a solid routine and a charismatic performance. This is true for most magic effects and why the best performers have relatively few actual effects in their repertoire because the audience wants to see the person perform almost regardless of what effect they actually perform.
Click here for more information.