LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN WILD FOWL. 225 



water was a mass of sunken debris, probably the remnants of an old muskrat house, 

 which reached nearly or quite to the surface of the water, here about 8 inches deep. 

 On this foundation was the nest, a rather compact, bulky structure, built mainly of 

 fine grass with, a little moss intermingled. Outside, the grass is long and circularly 

 disposed, while the bottom, inside, is composed of short broken pieces and the inside 

 rim of fine grass bent and loosely tangled together with considerable down among it. 

 Measurements were not taken before removing the nest, but in its present condition 

 the walls and base are 2^ inches thick, the diameter inside 6 inches, and the depth 

 of the cavity 3 inches. The clutch was nine eggs, which contained small embryos. 



My own experiences with the nesting habits of this species have 

 been rather unsatisfactory, but I will give them for what they are 

 worth. On June 12, 1901, while exploring some extensive wet mead- 

 ows about the sources of a branch of the Goose River in Steele 

 County, North Dakota, I flushed a strange duck from her nest; she 

 circled past me two or three times within gunshot, so that I had a 

 fairly good look at her, but I had no gun with me at the time; I 

 judged from her appearance and gait that she was a scaup, but she 

 lacked the white speculum of the other two species. I made two 

 subsequent visits to the nest alone and on the following day Doctor 

 Bishop and Mr. Job went with me; she proved too shy for us to 

 shoot, but we all concluded that she was a ring-necked duck, as the 

 eggs were unmistakably scaup's and if she had been one of the two 

 other species we would certainly have seen the conspicuous white 

 speculum. The nest was well concealed in thick grass in a rather 

 open place in the meadow about 10 yards from the river; it was 

 made of bits of dry grass and thickly lined with very dark gray 

 down; it contained 10 eggs, nearly fresh. This set is now in the col- 

 lection of Herbert Massey, Esq., in England. 



I found another doubtful nest in the Crane Lake slough in Saskat- 

 chewan on June 23, 1906; while hunting through the bullrushes 

 {Scirpus lacustris) for canvasback's nests, I flushed a small duck from 

 her nest and shot at her as she went fluttering off over the water, 

 but lost her in the bullrushes; the eggs were evidently scaup ducks' 

 and I felt certain that she had a gray speculum. The nest was in a 

 thick clump of dead bullrushes, made of dry bullrushes and lined 

 with very dark down; it measured 10 by 12 inches in diameter, 

 the inner cavity was 7 inches across and 3 inches deep; the rim was 

 built up about 3 inches above the water, and the eggs were wet and 

 partly in the water; there were eight eggs, one of which was a red- 

 head's. 



Mr. Herbert K. Job (1899) found a nest in the Turtle Mountain 

 region of North Dakota, on June 14, 1898, which he felt sure was a 

 nest of the ring-neck duck. He writes: 



It was in a reedy, boggy bayou, or arm of a lake, which was full of bitterns, black 

 terns, and bronzed, red-winged and yellow-headed blackbirds. I was on my way 



