BIRDS OF MINNESOTA. 51 



SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. 



Tail of sixteen feathers; bill black above and laterally at the 

 base; the sides and beneath, blue; head and upper part of neck 

 uniformly dark brown, glossed with green and purple behind; in- 

 ferior part of neck, breast, and under parts white; the white of 

 the neck passes up to the nape, separating the brown, and it- 

 self is divided dorsally by black, which below passes into the 

 gray of the back; sides, and back anteriorly are finely lined 

 transversely with black and white; wings, plain bluish gray; 

 greater coverts, with a terminal bar of purplish buff, below 

 which is a greenish purple speculum, margined behind by black 

 and tipped with white; longest tertials striped with silvery and 

 greenish black; scapulars black, edged with silvery; crissum 

 and elongated tail feathers black, the former edged with white. 



Length, 30; wing, 11; tail, 8.60; tarsus, 1.75; commissure, 

 2.86. 



Habitat, North America. 



AIX SPONSA (L.). (144.) 

 WOOD. 



Peerless amongst its entire family for its indescribable beauty 

 stands the Wood Duck. The nearest to a rival in the Duck 

 kingdom is the Mandarin Duck of Asia. But the difference be- 

 tween the two makes comparison odious. It is at once the 

 Prince of Ducks. The most truthful and esthetic description 

 of the mature male could reach no nearer the limning reality, 

 than the coldest prose could paint the rainbow. Science, after 

 all her most imposing assumptions, would sit down and weep 

 before the task, in blank despair. The impotence of all at- 

 ■ tempts has smirched the skirts of hope by what has been as- 

 sayed in its systematic as well as its vernacular nomenclature. 

 Aix Sponsa! Shades of Linnaeus, weep cold, clammy tears for 

 thine irremediable dereliction! Wood Duck! Summer Duck! 



Arriving simultaneously with the other earlier species, none 

 other braves the last rigors of the departing winter in the clos- 

 ing days of a Minnesota March with greater spirit. And when 

 they come, like the rains of the tropics, they pour in until 

 every pool in the woodlands has been deluged with them. This 

 may sound strangely and exaggerated to ears unfamiliar with 

 the history of bird life on the borders of civilization, yet such 

 has heretofore been my personal observation at the very loca- 

 tion of our city. Wilson and other writers who have described 

 the habits of the Wood Duck have uniformly stated that "they 

 seldom fly in flocks of more than three or four individuals to- 

 gether, and most commonly in pairs or singly." A little later 



