842 SHOVELER 



the surface of the water immediately above the spot Avhere Diving 

 Ducks (Pochard) are employing themselves beneath. On such 

 occasions a pair of Shovelers may be watched, almost for the hour 

 together, swimming in a circle, about a yard in diameter, their 

 heads turned inwards towards its centre, their bills immersed 

 vertically in the water, and engaged in sifting, by means of the 

 long lamellai before mentioned, the floating matters that are dis- 

 turbed by their submerged allies and rise to the top. These 

 gyrations are executed with the greatest ease, each Shoveler of the 

 pair merely using the outer leg to impel it on its circular course, 

 and to the observer the prettiest part of the performance is the pre- 

 cision with which each preserves its relative distance from its 

 partner. 



Four other species of the genus Spatula, all possessing the 

 characteristic light blue " shoulders," have been described : — one, aS'. 

 platalea, from the southern parts of South America, having the 

 head, neck and upper back of a pale reddish-brown, freckled or 

 closely spotted with dark brown, and a dull, hay breast with inter- 

 rupted bars ; a second, S. capensis, from South Africa, much lighter 

 in colour than the female of S. dypeata ; a third and a fourth, S. 

 rhynchotis and S. variegata, from Australia and New Zealand 

 respectively, — these last much darker in general coloration, and 

 the males possessing a white crescentic mark between the bill and 

 the eye,^ but so much resembling each other that their specific dis- 

 tinctness is denied by good authority (cf. Salvadori, Cat. B. Br. Mus. 

 xxvii. p. 315). In these last two the sexual difference is Avell 

 marked by the plumage ; but in the South-American and South- 

 African species it Avould seem that both male and female have much 

 the same appearance, as is the case with so many species of the re- 

 stricted genus Anas, though this cannot yet be asserted with certainty. 

 Apparently allied to the genus Sp>atula is Malacorhynchus 



memhranaceMS, the "Pink-eye" 

 of Australians — so called from 

 a spot of that colour, so un- 

 common in birds, just behind the 

 eye in the drakes — which has a 

 Bio. OK MALACORHYNCHUS. (After Swainson.) soft and flexible maxilla, having 



near the end on either side a triangular cutaneous flaj). It has 

 lamellx highly developed ; but its fasciated plumage of greyish- 

 brown and white has no resemblance to that of any member of 

 the genus Spnfuht. Another bird possessing somewhat similar 



^ This iiuuk is observable in several forms of Anatidee, and especially in the 

 Blue-winged and Cinnamon Teals of America, Anas or Qucrqucdula discors and 

 cyanoptcn/, species which not only exhibit in a still gi-eater degree the bine 

 " shoulders " of the Shoveler, but also have very well-developed lameUm on the 

 basal half of the bill. 



