lOO MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



i6. Merganser americanus (Cass.). 

 American Merganser. Goosander. Sheldrake. 



Of rather rare occurrence in autumn and winter. 



At sunrise on November 22, 1867, I saw a flock of about thirty American 

 Mergansers alight near the middle of Fresh Pond. Two birds of the same 

 species, which had been feeding close in under the land, but which up to this 

 time I had not noticed, swam out and, joining the others, soon returned with 

 them. The flock then spread over a considerable space along the rocky shore 

 near the Tudor boathouse (long since removed), some of its members landing 

 on a pebbly beach to preen their feathers, others half swimming, half wading, in 

 the shallow water, many diving for fish, and a few well out in the pond cruising 

 about, with heads erect, on the watch for danger. All were females or immature 

 males. I approached them under cover of the boathouse and, waiting until 

 three birds came together, fired, killing two and wounding a third which was 

 afterwards secured by another gunner. Still earlier that same autumn (on 

 October 12) I had taken a solitary Goosander (a young male) in Fresh Pond, 

 and on December 8 of the following year I saw there two males in fully adult 

 plumage which were accompanied by a female or immature male. I preserved the 

 bird killed on October 12, 1867, as well as one of those taken the following 

 month, but neither of these specimens is now in existence. There can be no 

 cjuestion as to their identity, however, for I had them both in my possession up 

 to 1874, when I had become perfectly familiar with the rather nice points of dif- 

 ference which distinguish females and young males of the present species from 

 those of the Red-breasted Merganser. 



I have heard that the American Merganser sometimes visits Spy Pond. 

 Mr. John H. Hardy, Jr., assures me that he has seen it there several times and 

 that on one occasion, about twenty years ago, he observed a flock containing ten 

 or a dozen birds. 



Mr. Walter Deane tells me that in January, 1904, some Goosanders 

 appeared in Charles River near the Cambridge Hospital. The weather was 

 bitterly cold at the time, and most of the river thickly encased in ice, but there 

 were a few spaces of open water where the birds alighted to swim about and 

 dive for fish. On January 14 he noted an adult male and five females or young 

 males with crested, rufous brown heads ; on the 1 7th two adult males and nine 

 females or young males ; on the 24th an adult male and one female or young male. 



