LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN WILD FOWL 157 



plumage, except that the female is decidedly smaller. This plumage 

 is worn without much change until the spring molt begins. This 

 molt is nearly complete, involving everything but the wings, and 

 produces the decided seasonal change peculiar to this species. 



Mr. A. J. van Rossem has sent me some notes on the molts and 

 plumages of this unique duck, based on extensive studies, from which 

 I quote as follows : 



The Juvenal plumage is retained until about January or February, when it 

 is replaced (including the tail) by a plumage closely resembling that of the 

 winter adults. The male, at least, about the middle or end of May then 

 assumes a red plumage in general resembling the midsummer adult, except that 

 the reds are dai-ker and apt to be obscured by an admixture of darker (similar 

 to the winter) feathers. With the taking on of this first red plumage, the tail 

 is again molted. It is molted again in the fall, at the time of the transition 

 into winter plumage. Thus two years are required to attain the brilliant red 

 plumage of the fully adult male. 



The ruddy duck is one of very few species wdiich have a strictly 

 nuptial plumage and two extensive molts. The prenuptial molt in 

 April and May produces the well-known nuptial plumage of the 

 male, involving practically all of the contour plumage and the tail, 

 and characterized by the brownish black crow^n, the white cheeks, 

 the sky-blue bill, and the " chestnut " back. The nuptial plumage of 

 the female is not so striking; it is much like that of the first winter, 

 but the cheeks, chin, and throat become purer white. 



There is no eclipse plmnage. The summer molt, occurring from 

 August to October, is complete, producing an adult wdnter plumage 

 much like that of the first winter, except that the cheeks, chin, and 

 throat are pure white, including the lores and nearly up to the eyes; 

 the sexes are much alike in this plumage, but the male is decidedly 

 larger, and many of the mottled feathers of the mantle and flanks 

 are more or less w^ashed with chestnut. Adults can always be dis- 

 tinguished from young birds by the white cheeks and throats. 



Food. — Being decidedly a diving duck, the ruddy duck obtains 

 most of its food on the bottom and subsists very largely on a vege- 

 table diet, hence its flesh is usually well flavored. While living on 

 the inland ponds, marshes, and streams, it feeds on the seeds, roots, 

 and stems of grasses and the bulbs and leaves of aquatic plants, such 

 as flags, teal moss, wild rice, pond lilies, duckweed, and wild r3'e. 

 Dr. F. Henry Yorke (1899) says it also eats small fishes, slugs, snails, 

 mussels, larvae, fish spawn, worms, and creeping insects. Prof. 

 W. B. Barrows (1912) "once took from the crop and stomach of a 

 single ruddy duck, at Middletown, Connecticut, 22,000 seeds of a 

 species of pondweed (iV«/rts), which at that time was growing in great 

 abundance in the city reservoir, where the bird was shot." Dr. J. C. 

 Phillips (1911) found in the stomachs of ruddy ducks, shot in Massa- 



