26 BULLETIN 130, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



stretched neck toward a duck who has listlessly strayed from the group. He 

 alights beside her precipitately, sliding along on his tail, his breast and head 

 elevated to their utmost extent and held erect. He bobs nervously. And so 

 it goes. 



Nesting. — The center of abimdance of the bufflehead in the breed- 

 ino^ season seems to be in the wooded regions of Canada lying; west 

 and north of the Great Plains, ^vhere it is well distributed and in 

 some places quite common. Sidney S. S. Stansell (1909) says that 

 in central Alberta it is " about as common as the mallard ; nearly 

 every small pond has its pair, and some of them two pairs, of this 

 beautiful little duck. "When two or more pairs occupy a single pond, 

 the males are u.sually very pugnacious, often quarreling and trying 

 to drive each other off the pond for hours at a time." A set of 12 

 eggs in my collection collected by Mr. Stansell, near Carvel, Alberta, 

 on June 11, 1912, was taken from an old flicker's nesting hole, 20 

 feet from the ground; as the eggs were nearly fresh, there w'as 

 no lining in the nest except the chips left hy the previous occupant. 



Herbert JSIasse}' has sent me some data regarding a set of 10 eggs 

 in his collection, taken by Mr. W. H. Bingaman, at Island Lake, 

 Saskatchewan, 50 miles west of Prince Albert, on May 28, 1905. The 

 nest was in an enlarged flicker excavation 15 feet from the ground 

 and 2 feet from the broken-off top of a dead poplar tree; the 

 eggs lay 15 inches below the very irregular opening, among rotten 

 wood dust, flicker feathers, and light-colored down of the duck; 

 the tree was 10 yards from the shore of the lake; the female was 

 sitting and was secured. The collector says : 



I found this species nowhere abundant in Saskatchewan, and two sets are 

 the complete result of my season's work among this species. I took one other 

 set at Montreal Lake, 95 miles northeast of Island Lake, and the nesting site 

 was almost a duplicate of this one ; it also contained 10 eggs. 



Maj. Allan Brooks (1903) thus describes the breeding habits of 

 the bufflehead in the Cariboo district of British Columbia : 



Almost every lake has one or more pairs of these charming little ducks. 

 Unlike Barrow's goldeneye, the nests were always in trees close to or but a 

 short distance away from water. These nests were invariably the deserted 

 nesting holes of flickers, and in most cases had been used several years in 

 succession by the ducks. The holes were in aspen trees, from 5 to 20 feet 

 from the ground, and the entrance was not more than 31/4 inches in diameter. 

 The number of eggs ranged from 2 to 9, 8 being the average ; in color they 

 resemble old ivory, without any tinge of green. I have several times seen 

 the eggs of this duck described as " dusky green," but these have evidently 

 been the eggs of some species of teal. The female bufflehead is a very close 

 sitter, never leaving the nest until the hole was sawed out, and in most cases 

 I had to lift the bird and throw her up in the air. when she would make a 

 bee line for the nearest lake, where her mate would be slowly swimming up 

 and down unconscious of the violation of his home. In many cases the eggs 

 had fine cracks, evidently made by the compression of the bird's body when 

 entering the small aperture. 



