40 BULLETIN 130, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



dive, but the young were unable to stay below the surface more than 

 four or five seconds. The parent would then come to the surface and 

 again try to coax them to follow her below. She did not attempt to 

 lead them to the shore." Wlien the young are fully grown and 

 able to fly they all leave the small ponds and sheltered places where 

 they have been living and move off to the shore. This often occurs 

 quite late in the season, for small downy young are often to be found 

 up to the middle of August or later; the hatching date is very 

 variable, as the eggs are so often disturbed and a second or third 

 laying made necessary. The lateness of the fall migration gives a 

 long breeding season and plently of time to make several attempts 

 at raising a brood. 

 Mr. Ekblaw's notes state that : 



While the females are brooding the eggs the males and the sterile females 

 fly and swim about the pouds in promiscuous flocks. These sterile females are 

 restless and active, quite different from the mated females during the mating 

 season. In the mating season the female of a pair usually rests quietly on 

 the bank of the pond, apparently heavy with eggs, while her mate swims about 

 near her. The sterile females are noisy and uneasy. 



These sterile females and the males leave the land and the environs of the 

 shore about the 20th of July and seek the outer skerries and open water. The 

 nesting females take their little ducklings down to the salt water as soon 

 as they can toddle along, and from then until they hie themselves away to 

 the southland they spend all their time along the rocky shores in the pleasant 

 coastal bays and fjords or about the icebergs and floes. "Very frequently two 

 mother birds join their flocks, and then, when swimming about in the open 

 sea, one mother leads the flock while the other brings up the rear. 



The young birds grow fast and quickly develop strength for swimming far 

 and fast. They can dive as well as they can swim. They soon lose their 

 first down and take on a juvenal dark-brown downy covering, into which the 

 feathers gradually come. It is not until they are fully grown, about the 

 last week in August or first week in September, that they are able to fly, and 

 then, fat and plump and strong, they start southward by easy stages, de- 

 veloping wing power as they go. Long before the eiders begin leaving, the 

 oldsquaws are gone from the coast, and then winter soon sets in. 



Plumages. — The downy young oldsquaw is very dark-colored 

 above, very deep, rich " clove brown," becoming almost black on 

 the crown and rump, and paler " clove brown " in a band across tho 

 chest. This dark color covers more than half of the head, includ- 

 ing the crown, hind neck, and cheeks; it is relieved, however, by a 

 large spot below the eye and a smaller one above it of whitish, also 

 an indistinct loral spot and postocular streak of the same. The 

 throat is white and the sides of the neck and auricular region are 

 grayish white. The belly is white. Both the dark and the light 

 brown areas become duller and grayer with age. 



The plumage appears first on the under parts; the breast and 

 belly are fully feathered first, then the flanks and scapulars: the 

 plumage covers the back, head and neck before the wings are grown, 



