154 BULLETIN 126, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



their feeding grounds from blinds or boats concealed in their fly ways, 

 no decoys being necessary. Pintails will come readily to live mallard 

 decoys during the daytime on their feeding grounds and they will 

 respond to duck calls if skillfully handled, offering very fine sport where 

 they are not shot at too much. 



Dr. Leonard C. Sanford (1903) says: 



In portions of the West where they frequent the ponds and smaller lakes they are 

 much more easily killed than on larger bodies of water. The pintail arrives on the 

 coast of North Carolina late in October, and are found in numbers through the brackish 

 sounds. Decoys attract them occasionally, but never in as large numbers as the other 

 ducks, for they are always wary and quick to suspect danger. These birds can be distin- 

 guished afar. The white under parts of the male and their long necks mark them at 

 once. The flight is high in lines abreast, but almost before the flock is seen they 

 are by and out of sight. When about to decoy no bird is more graceful; they often 

 drop from a height far out of range and circle about the stool, watching carefully for 

 the slightest motion ; finally they swing within range and plunge among the wooden 

 ducks. After realizing the mistake, they spring up all together, and are out of shot 

 almost before you realize the chance is gone. 



Winter. — Like many other fresh-water ducks of the interior the 

 pintail winters largely on the warm seacoasts of the Southern States, 

 though it is also abundant among the inland ponds and marshes below 

 the frost line. It is particularly abundant in Florida, as the following 

 account by Mr. C. J. Maynard (1896) will show: 



On one occasion, while I was making my way down Indian River, numbers of these 

 ducks were passing over my head southward. They flew in straggling flocks, con- 

 sisting of from twenty to some hundreds of specimens, and one company followed 

 another so closely that there was an almost unbroken line. They continued to move 

 in tliis manner all the morning; thus many thousands of individuals must have passed 

 UB. Shortly after noon they began to alight along the beaches in such nmnbers that 

 they fairly covered the ground, and were so unsuspicious that my assistant, who had 

 left the boat some time previous, walked within a few yards of them, and killed 

 three or four with a single discharge of a light gun which was merely loaded with a 

 small charge of dust shot. This occurred in early March and the birds were evi- 

 dently gathering, preparatory to migrating northward, for in a few days they had all 

 disappeared. 



While wintering on the seacoast, especially where it is much mo- 

 lested, the pintail often spends the day well out on the ocean, flying 

 in at night to feed in the shallow tidal estuaries on the beds of Zostera 

 or on the mud and sand flats where it finds plenty of small mollusks. 



DISTRIBUTION. 



Breeding range. — The species is circumpolar. The North American 

 form breeds east to the west coast of Hudson Bay, and James Bay 

 (both coasts), and rarely east of Lake Michigan. It has been known 

 to breed in New Brunswick (Tobique River, 1879) and in southern 

 Ontario (Rondeau, Lake Erie) and southeastern Michigan (St. Clair 

 Flats'^. South to northern Illinois (formerly, but now scarce even 



