It always amazes me how quickly mail from the UK (including parcels) reaches New Zealand, literally on the opposite side of the world. Mail from Australia (just a short hop across The Ditch aka the Tasman Sea) generally takes three-to-four times as long. Ditto mail from the USA, unless I pay for priority mail.
Something else I've noticed ... mail from, say, the USA sent via priority mail (with online tracking provided by USPS) will generally reach NZ and clear customs within only a handful of days. Then, it takes NZ Post several days to shift it from Auckland down to Masterton where I live. Often, the journey from Auckland to Masterton is considerably longer than the journey from wherever it was posted in the USA to being cleared by NZ Customs. Unless the mail comes from the UK, in which case it seems to be delivered by NZ Post with lightning speed. Kinda makes you wonder, eh?
However, I'm glad you like the book. As I already stated, it literally
is the Grumman Goose, Widgeon & Mallard bible. There is only one other book I'd recomment on this topic, but it is much more focused and is also a lot more difficult to get hold of a copy. “
Grumman Mallard — The Enduring Classic” by Fred W. Hotson & Matthew E. Rodina Jr. (published in 2006 by
Robin Brass Studio and Fred W. Hotson). The book is out-of-print, but if you are interested in the Mallard, I'd highly recommend trying to track down a copy, but good-condition examples tend to be expensive (see
this search at Biblio.com). I did for a time have two copies (the bookshop in Wellington, NZ I purchased the first copy from was closing down and slashed the price of their stock, so I grabbed the sole remaining copy of the book they had in stock at half-price), but I later swapped the second copy with somebody for another book.