50 BULLETIN 12»>, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



selves and never venture nearer the decoys, M'hile the unsuspecting 

 mallards would soon he swiinmino; in and out amongst the wooden 

 ducks. 



DISTKIBUTION. 



Contributed by Wharton Huber. 



Although little is yet known of the range of this species, we do know 

 that it is most plentiful along the llio Grande River from Albu- 

 querque, New Alexico, south to El Paso, Texas. Wetmore in his 

 paper on Birds of Lake Burford, New Mexico, 1920, speaks of seeing — 



on May 25tli (1918), a large very dark-colored duck in compsuiy with a mated pair of 

 mallards. It had white bars on either side of the speculum and was much darker in 

 color than the female mallard, resembling a black duck markedly. It is possible 

 that this Avas a female mallard, but it seemed to have a clear olive green bill and was 

 larger, thus resembling a male of the black duck group (possibly A. diazi). 



This evidently was an individual of the present species in the north- 

 western part of the State of New Mexico (Rio Arriba County) . Prob- 

 ably the lakes and streams of Chihuahua, Mexico, will shortly be in- 

 cluded in the known range of this duck. 



[Author's note: A female, now in the Conover collection in the 

 Field Musenm in Chicago, was taken in Cherry County, Nebraska, 

 on October 17, 1921.] 



ANAS RUBKIPES TRISTIS Brewster. 

 BLACK DUCK. 



HABITS. 



The black duck, or dusky duck, as it was formerly and more 

 properly called, for it is far from black, fills an even more important 

 place among the wild fowl of eastern North America than does the 

 far-famed mallard of the interior and western part of our continent. 

 The black duck, by which name it is universally known among gunners, 

 is decidedly the duck of the Eastern States, where it far outnumbers 

 all other species of fresh water ducks. The West has many other 

 species to divide the honoi's with the mallard, but in the East the 

 black duck stands practically alone. It is the black duck more than 

 any other that is suggested to my mind by those classic lines of 

 William CuUen Bryant: 



Vainly the fowler's eye 



Might mark thy distant flight to do thoo wrong, 

 As, darkly lined upon the crimson sky, 



Thy figure floats along. 



Spring. — When the gentle breath of spring calls him from his 

 winter home on the New England seacoast the black duck seems to 

 know in some mysterious way that the ice is going out of the lakes 



