TJKK HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN WILD FOWL. 115 



Young. — As the male deserts the female soon after the eggs are 

 laid, incubation is jierformed solely by her. Incubation does not 

 begin until after the last egg is laid, one egg having been laid each 

 day until the set is complete, llie period of incubation is from 21 

 to 23 days. The young hatch almost simultaneously, or at least 

 within a few hours; they remain in the nest until they have dried 

 oft" and are strong enough to walk, when they are led to the nearest 

 M^ater and taught hj their devoted mother to feed. Their food at 

 this age consists mainly of soft insects, worms, and other small, ten- 

 der, animal food, but they soon learn to forage for themselves and 

 pick up a variety of vegetable foods as well. The young are guarded 

 with tender care by one of the most devoted of mothers; when sur- 

 prised with her brood of young she resorts to all the arts and strat- 

 egies known to anxious bird mothers to draw the intruder away from 

 her brood or to distract his attention, utterly regardless of her own 

 safety, while the young have time to hide or escape to a place of 

 safety. The young are experts at hiding, even in open situations, 

 where they squat Hat on the ground and vanish: but they usually 

 run or swim in among tall grass or reeds, where it is almost useless 

 to look for them. All through the remainder of the summer, until 

 they are able to il}^, she remains with them teaching them where to 

 find the choicest foods and how to escape from their numerous ene- 

 mies; they learn to know her warning calls, when to run and w^hen to 

 hide, and by the end of the summer they are ready to gather into 

 flocks for the fall migration. 



Plumaf/es.--hi the dow^ny young the colors of the upper j^arts vary 

 from "mummy brow'n" to "Dresden brown," darker on the crown 

 and rump, hghter elsewhere, the down being much darker basally; the 

 under parts are "maize yellow," shaded locally with "buft' yellow," 

 due to the darker tips of the down; the sides of the head are "yellow 

 ocher" or pale "buckthorn l)rown" in young birds, but these colors 

 soon fade and all the colors grow paler as the young bird increases in 

 size. The color pattern of the head consists of a dark-brown central 

 crown bordered on each side by a broad superciliary stripe of yellow 

 ocher, below which is a narrow postocular stripe, a loral patch, and 

 an auricular s{)ot of dusky. On the back the brown is broken by 

 fouT large spots of yellowish, one on each side of the rump and one 

 on each scapular region. Young blue-wing teal closely resemble 

 young shovellers, but the latter are paler colored, with all the brown 

 areas more extensive, with less of the rich buff and yellow tints and 

 with longer and more broadly tipped bills. 



The young develop more rapidly than those of the larger ducks, 

 as they are late breeders and early fail migrants. The first feathers 

 to appear on the downy young are the mottled feathers of the sides. 



