34 BULT^ETIN 126, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



the winter it most often keeps to the rivers and streams both iu flat and hilly country > 

 wooded or quite open country, and from there it visits other open places of the lakes, 

 ponds, brooks, or even quite small springs. Should the cold become more severe, 

 and should therefore fewer places remain free from ice, then they g;o the round from 

 one to the other and betake themselves as soon as they are disturbed to the next place 

 and continue thus, doing ibis daily lor weeks, and repeat tliis series of changes though 

 not at regular intervals, until the cold weather either forces them farther southwest or 

 the approach of milder weather opens again larger places for them on the rivers and 

 permits them to remain there. They can endure the most severe cold quite comfort- 

 ably, and it is only the breaking up of the ice on the rivers which they hate, particu- 

 larly if the so-called ground ice is driving hard; in that case they take refuge on the 

 open places of quiet water in the neighborhood of the former and fly from one to 

 another. In time of need they do not despise an occasional stay on the smallest 

 springs and brooks, and in our neighborhood often appear at such times quite close 

 to the villages. 



DISTRIBUTION. 



Breeding range. — Northern Europe and Asia. From northern Lap- 

 land and Finland eastward across northern Russia and Siberia to 

 Bering sea. 



Winter range. — ^On the eastern coasts from Norway to Morocco and 

 inland as far south as the Swiss lakes, the Mediterranean, Black and 

 Caspian Seas, Persia, Afghanistan, north India, China, Japan and 

 the Commander Islands. 



Casual records. — One reported taken by Audubon near New Orleans 

 in winter of 1817. Specimen in the British Museum purchased from 

 the Hudson's Bay Compaii}", and one in the Tristam collection, both 

 supposed to have come from North America. 



Egg dates. — Northern Europe: Twelve records, May 23 to June 2(); 

 six records, May 28 to Juno 14. 



ANAS PLATYRHYNCHA Linnaeus. 

 MALLARD. 



HABITS. 



Spring. — With the lirst signs of the breaking up of winter, v.hen 

 the February sun, mounting higher in the heavens, exerts its genial 

 power on winter's accumulations of ice and snow, and when the 

 warm rains soften the fetters that have bound the lakes and streams 

 of the middle west, the hardy mallards, the leaders in the migrating 

 hordes of wild fowl, leave their winter homes in the Southern States 

 and pusli northward whenever they can find water, about the 

 margins of the ponds, in open spring holes, and among the floating 

 ice of rivers and streams, flushed with the spring torrents from 

 melting snow banks. Because they follow so closely in the footsteps 

 of retreating winter the earliest migrants have been termed " ice 

 mallards" by the gunners. The spring migration starts in the 

 Central Mississippi Valley soon after the middle of February and 



