172 BULLETIN 126, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



causes"; it seems likely that the specimen may have come over in 

 some shipment of foreign game or may have escaped from some pri- 

 vate preserve. 



As the bird is entirely unknown in this country I shall have to cull 

 its life history from the writings of European authors. Mr. John G. 

 Millais (1913) writes: 



Essentially a southern species, the red-crested pochard comes north to Germany or 

 to England in October and November before the frost and snow and leaves for the 

 south on the first signs of Arctic conditions, whilst a few come north in 

 March and AprU and wander about in small parties before seeking their breeding 

 places in May. In Europe they do not appear to be very gregarious, as they are in 

 India, where they arrive in flocks of thousands in late October and November. 

 Hume mentions finding them in " flocks of many thousands and acres of water paved 

 with them," whilst Reid says: " One morning in December I came across countless 

 numbers in a jheel in the Fyzabad district, closely packed and covering the whole 

 surface of the water, with their red heads moving independently, while the breeze 

 kept their crests in motion ; a distant spectator might have mistaken them for a vast 

 expanse of beautiful aquatic flowers." 



The red-crested pochard is essentially a duck of the fresh water and is never found 

 upon the open sea. The ponds and lakes they like to frequent are reedy, sedge-lined 

 sheets of water with a considerable area of deep water in the centre. 



Courtship.— The red-crested pochards arrive at their breeding places at the end of 

 March or early in April, but the females do not begin making their nests till the end 

 of the latter month. The courtship of the male is somewhat showy but not very 

 varied. It throws up the body from the water, depressing the bill to the fore part of 

 the neck, and at the same time displaying, i. e., erecting and spreading the whole 

 of the beautiful feathers of the crest, the body raised to about an angle of 75° . During 

 this sudden act of show the bird utters a low squeaking whistle, and as the body falls 

 to the water again the crest resumes its normal position, and, releasing the air in the 

 chest, it utters a low grunt or groan. Sometimes when in full show the male will 

 frequently swim round the female with depressed bill and expanded crest, but beyond 

 this I have seen no other efforts at display. The female resorts to attitudes similar 

 to the other diving species, such as swimming round the male with lowered body and 

 extended head and neck held out along the water. She also frequently utters her 

 harsh guttural cry at this season. 



Nesting. —Br. Baldmus, who took 10 nests in 1866-1870 in central Germany, states 

 that—" The nest is always placed in the rushes or flags, usually on a small island in 

 a pond or on the flags, and, like all ducks' nests, it has a foundation of rotten stems 

 of rushes and dead leaves, on which a warm bed of down is placed, this down being 

 plucked from the breast of the female. When the female leaves the nest quietly, 

 she covers her eggs, as do all the ducks, even our common tame species. During the 

 time the female is sitting the males are to be seen on the water with those of ferina, 

 leucopthalmus, and clypeata, but generally somewhat apart from them." 



Mr. W. Eagle Clarke (1895) describes a nest of this species, which 

 he found on an island in a shallow etang in the southwestern Ca- 

 marque, as — 



placed in the center of a thick tangled mass of purslane {Atriplex porttdacoides) so 

 dense that it was reached by a covered way, 2 feet in length, worked in the shrub 

 where it rested on the soil; the nest was on the ground and consisted of a broad rim 

 of down, with a few short dry tamarisk twigs, and contained 10 fresh eggs. A few 

 yards farther on another duck of this species was disturbed — this time from under an 



