SAND DUNES AND SALT MARSHES 



also assumes this dress, wMcli becomes for 

 him an eclipse plumage in very truth. 



Now, in the case of the mergansers, the 

 drakes emerge from their eclipse in late No- 

 vember, but their charms are wasted for a 

 time, because the ducks with their young, as 

 sometimes happens with the females of the 

 human species, betake themselves to a warmer 

 climate. The males are left to light the battle 

 alone in the north, until the more genial 

 weather of the spring brings back the females 

 and young from the south. 



The southern side of this picture, which 

 rounds out and corroborates my northern ob- 

 servations, has been given me by Mr. William 

 Brewster, who says that in Florida in winter 

 he has seen large flocks of female and imma- 

 ture red-breasted mergansers, and by Mr. Ar- 

 thur T. Wayne, who, in his '^ Birds of South 

 Carolina," says of this species: *' From the 

 time when the fish-eating ducks arrive until 

 the first week in February the adult drakes 

 are seldom, if ever, seen, but towards the sec- 

 ond week in February they make their appear- 

 ance in large numbers." 



The old males brave the rigors of the north- 

 ern climate, while the females and young seek 



144 



