LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN WILDFOWL, 

 ORDER ANSERES (PART). 



By Arthur Cleveland Bent, 



Of Tan n to n , Massaclm f<etU . 



Family AN ATI DAE, Ducks, Geese, and Swans. 



MERGUS MERGANSER AMERICANUS Cassin. 

 AMERICAN MERGANSER. 



HABITS. 



Spring. — This large and handsome duck has always been associated 

 in my mind with the first signs of the breaking up of winter. Being 

 a hardy species, it lingers on the southern border of ice and snow and 

 is the very first of our waterfowl to start on its spring migration. 

 We may confidently look for it in New England during the first warm 

 days in February or as soon as the ice has begun to break up in our 

 rivers and lakes. We are glad to greet these welcome harbingers of 

 spring, for the sight of the handsome drakes flying along our water 

 courses or circling high in the air over our frozen lakes, with their 

 brilliant colors flashing in the winter sunshine, reminds us of the 

 migratory hosts that are soon to follow. They are looking for open 

 water in the rivers, for rifts in the ice or open borders around the 

 shores of the lakes, where the first warm sunshine has tempted the 

 earliest fish to seek the genial shallows, but they are often doomed 

 to disappointment, for winter lingers in the lap of spring and again 

 locks the lakes with solid ice driving the hardy pioneers back to 

 winter quarters. 1lie drakes are always the first to arrive and the 

 females follow a few weeks later. Mr. Fred A. Shaw writes to me 

 that in Maine— "The males generally make their appearance in 

 March and in a short time select their mates, leaving early in April 

 for their breeding grounds." 



CowtsJtip. — Perhaps the best account of the courtship of this spe- 

 cies is given by Dr. Charles W. Townsend (1916), as follows: 



A .tjroup oi' five or six malu mergansers may be seou swimming energetically back 

 and forth by three or four passive females. Sometimes the drakes swim in a compact 

 mass or in a fihi for six or seven yards or even farther, and then each turns abruptly 



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