98 Notices of some California Birds. [ZOE 
to Prof. Ridgway for identification. In the summer of 1879 Dr. 
Fred. J. Huse and myself spent three very fatiguing days in follow- 
ing the deep rocky cafion of the north fork of the river, in search 
of new fishing ground, and in stocking the river with trout. I had 
stopped by a large deep pool, and he had gone a short distance up 
stream in a rocky gorge. While we were separated, a strange duck 
which he had probably frightened, but did not see, flew down the 
cafion and alighted within twenty yards of me, bent its neck for- 
ward close to the water, lifted its wings and uttered a scream I had 
never heard. A mountaineer who had not long before joined us 
was between me.and the much-coveted duck, and I was unable to 
shoot at it until it had floated down the rapid stream so far as to 
be out of effective range. I yearned for a specimen of that duck 
until about a year later, when I visited the same locality and found 
a brood of half-grown young and shot three or four of them, in- 
cluding the above-mentioned juvenile which Prof. Ridgway identi- 
fied. Since that time I have often seen these ducks in the 
Stanislaus River, and have occasionally seen them on other streams 
in that neighborhood, but have seen the young ducks only on the 
Stanislaus River, where they are latterly becoming rare, owing to 
their destruction by fishermen. Dr. Huse saw a female harlequin 
with a brood of ducklings on Griswold Creek in 1881 or 1882, and 
J. Clarence Sperry and Horace Pillsbury caught a juvenile from a 
flock of the same, which could not fly, on the same creek, in the 
summer of 1889. The most southern point where it has been cap- 
tured in California is the south fork of the Tuolumne River, where 
I got two fine specimens—a male and female—May 15, 1891. . 
The ovaries of the female were small—no larger than number one 
shot. The adult male breeding plumage I had not seen in the field 
until I got the specimens in the south fork of the Tuolumne River, 
near Crocker’s Station. Latterly I thought these ducks might be a 
southern differentiated form of the harlequin duck, but these 
specimens—which now are a part of the California Academy collec- 
tion—prove that such is not the fact. The only California Coast 
specimen that I have heard of is a fine male that was shot by Mr. 
Lewis Locke in Bodega Bay. Mr. F.H. Holmes, who informed 
me of it in 1885, said he had seen the specimen and examined ae 
label, but had forgotten the date of its capture. 
Dr. Coues, in Birds of the Northwest, published in 1874, says 
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