394 



ALECTORIDES. 



Hab. The whole of North America, Middle America, and West Indies ; north to Greenland 

 and Alaska, south to Veragua and Trinidad. 



Sp. Char. Adult : General color uniform slate-color or slaty plumbeous, the head and neck 

 and anterior central portion of the crissuni black ; lateral and posterior portions of the crissum, 

 edge of wing, and tips of secondaries wliite. (In winter, the belly suffused with whitish.) Bill 

 milk-white, more bluish terminally, each mandible with a spot of dark brown near the end, bor- 

 dered anteriorly with a more or less distinct bar of reddish chestnut ; frontal shield dark chestnut- 

 or liver-brt)wn, the culmen just in front of this tinged with greenish yellow ; iris bright crimson ; 

 legs bright yellowish green, the tibiae tinged l)ehmd and aljove with orange-red ; toes light bluish 



gray, tinged with yellowish green on scutella3 of basal phalanges. ^ Youmj : Similar, but lower 

 parts more gray, and mucli suffused with whitish, especially on the throat and belly ; bill dull 

 flesh-color, tinned with olive-greenish, the frontal shield rudimentary ; iris brown. Doivny youny : 

 Prevailing color blackish plumbeous ; head, neck, and upper parts relieved by numerous crisp, 

 elongated, somewhat filamentous bristles, these sparse, light orange-buff and white, on the upper 

 parts, but dense and deep salmon-orange on the head and neck, where the dark plumbeous down 

 is almost or quite concealed ; these colored filaments entirely absent from the whole pileum, which 

 is mostly bald toward the occiput, elsewhere covered with closely appressed black bristles ; lores 

 densely covered with short, stamen-like, orange-red papilla3. Bill orange-red, the tip of the max- 

 illa l)lack ; feet dusky (in skin). 



Total length, about 14 inches ; wing, 7. 25-7. HO ; culmen (to commencement of frontal shield), 

 1.25-1.50 ; tarsus, 2.00-2.20 ; middle toe, 2.45-2.65. 



Tlie Conimon Coot of the jSTorth American fauna has a very widely extended 

 distribution. It is found present and breeding in a large part of Northern South 

 America, in Jamaica, Cuba, and other West India Islands, in many of the Southern 

 States, in the Northwestern States, in the interior between the Missouri and the 

 Western Mountains, on the Pacific coast, and on the Saskatchewan and the Mackenzie 

 as far to the north as the 55th parallel, and even farther. It is not so common on 

 the Atlantic coast, and is met with chiefly, or wholly, in its migrntiojis — usually in 

 September. It is very abundant in Mexico in the winter. Two instances are cited 

 by Reinhardt of its having been taken in Greenland : one was in 1854, by Mr. Olric, 

 the governor of North Greenland, in the harbor of Christianshaab ; the other in the 

 same year, by Holboll, at Godthaab. It is an occasional visitant of Bermuda. Eich- 

 ardson, who met with it in the Fur Country, states that its habits exactly resemble 

 those of the closely allied Euro])ean Coot. The small grassy lakes which skirt the 

 Saskatchewan Plains are much frequented by this species. It was not met Avith near 



^ Fresh colors of an adult male killed at Wheatland, Tnd., April l'>, 1881. 



