84 BULLETIN 126, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



The gadwall associates freely with other species of similar habits 

 and tastes, particularly with the haldpate and pintail, with which it 

 seems to be on good terms. 



Game. — There seems to be a difference of opinion among sports- 

 men as to the food value of the gadwall; some consider it a close 

 second to the mallard and others say it is hardly fit to eat; probably 

 this is due to the different kinds of food that it lives on in various 

 localities. 



Mr. Dwight W. Huntington (1903) writes of his experience in 

 shooting it : 



I found it fairly abundant in North Dakota and usually shot a few gadwalls with 

 the other ducks. One day when shooting on a little pond quite near the Devils 

 Lake, I shot a lart^e number of ducks, and nearly all of them were gadwalls. They 

 came quite rapidly toward evening, and standing in the tall rushes without much 

 effort at concealment, I had some very rapid shooting. Far out on the lake the 

 swans and geese were trumpeting and honking. Large flocks of snowgeese, or white 

 brant, as they call them in Dakota, were always in the air; the mallard, sprigtails, 

 teal, and all the ducks were flying everywhere; but the gadwalls were the only ducks 

 which came to me in any numbers. Had I put out only gadwall decoys, there might 

 have been a reason for this, but I had no decoj^s that day at all. In fact the ducks 

 were always so abundant that I could kill far more than I could carry, without decoys, 

 and an ambulance from the garrison came out to carry in the game. 



Winter.— As the gadwall is one of the later migrants northward 

 in the spring, not appearing usually until the ice is all out of the 

 ponds, so it is also one of the earlier ducks to leave in the fall and 

 start on its short flight to its winter home in the Southern States, 

 principally in the lower Mississippi valley, and in Mexico. The gad- 

 wall is primarily a fresh vrater duck, breeding far in the interior and 

 wintering principally in the inland })onds, marshy lakes, sloughs, and 

 swamps, v/here it can find mild weather and plenty of food ; but it 

 frequents to some extent the brackish pools and estuaries along the 

 coasts of Louisiana and Texas, where it is very common. Messrs. 

 Beyer, Alhson, and Kopman (1906) say of its winter movements in 

 Louisiana : 



As in the case of the mallard, the first came by the early or the middle part of 

 October, and continue to increase decidedly until the middle of December, then 

 remaining in statu quo or showing something of a decrease, according to the nature of 

 the winter, until the middle of January. A strong northward movement begiiis at 

 that time, and wliile it consists largely of individuals that have wintered in Louisiana, 

 it is doubtless augmented also by the first passage of transients. This later movement 

 continues more or less freely until about March 15, after which date, duck migration 

 is restricted almost entirely to a few species, among which the gadwall is seldom if 

 ever found. 



DISTRIBUTION. 



Breeding range. — Temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. 

 In North America, east to Hudson Bay (Churchill), southeastern 

 Manitoba (Shoal Lake), southern Wisconsin (Lake Koshkonong, for- 



