114 MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



Redheads alighted in Cambridge Nook, Fresh Pond. I sculled my boat to 

 within thirty yards of them, but both barrels of my gun missed fire and the 

 birds flew to the other side of the pond, where Mr. Ruthven Deane got a shot at 

 them, wounding two which dove so adroitly and persistently that neither could 

 be secured. Two of the members of this flock were old males whose rich chest- 

 nut heads and necks, grayish backs and black rumps showed conspicuously in 

 the sunlight as they floated buoyantly on the smooth water. 



On October 21, 1903, Mr. Richard S. Eustis observed a flock of five Red- 

 heads in Fresh Pond, getting sufficiently near them to make out that two were 

 males and three in the plumage of the female. It is probable that the males 

 remained in the pond during the following month, for I found two birds of that 

 sex on the mornings of November 14 and 30, as well as on that of December i, 

 swimming in company with Black Ducks in the deep water off Hemlock Point. 

 On one of these occasions they approached the shore closely and I had an excel- 

 lent view of them. One was a fully mature and remarkably handsome bird ; 

 the other had the chestnut red of the head and neck of a yellowish cast, and 

 the black of the breast tinged with brown. 



In 1903 a solitary male Redhead was seen in Fresh Pond by Mr. Walter 

 Deane on December 6, and on the nth, 17th, and 21st of the month either the 

 same or a similar bird was observed there by Mr. Harold Bowditch. 



Mr. Walter Fa.xon writes me that " an intelligent gunner " of his acquaint- 

 ance claims to have shot a Redhead in Smith's Pond in the autumn of 1888; 

 Mr. John H. Hardy, Jr., that the species has also been taken at Spy Pond ; Mr. 

 Henry Bryant Bigelow that he " saw a pair, male and female, on a small pond 

 on the estate of Miss Walker in Waltham, on October 7, 1899." The birds 

 last mentioned have been already recorded by Messrs. Howe and Allen.* 

 According to Miss Walker they appeared in the pond several days before the 

 date of Mr. Bigelow's observation and remained there about a week. 



29. Aythya vallisneria (Wils.). 

 Canvas-back. 



Of very rare occurrence during migration. 



The Canvas-back is known to breed only in the northwestern portions of 



' R. H. Howe, Jr., and G. M. Allen, Birds of Massachusetts, 1901, 53. 



