BIRDS OF THE CAMBRIDGE REGION. 121 



effects of a gun-shot wound, probably inflicted the day before. On the morning 

 of October 24, 1871, I had a good view of a flock of seven Old-squaws, all 

 apparently adult males, which flew about low over the pond, but did not alight 

 there. On November 8, 1875, a female Old-squaw, now in my possession, was 

 shot in Fresh Pond by Mr. M. Abbott Frazar. 



Mr. George B. Frazar tells me that Old-squaws still occasionally visit the 

 Mystic Ponds, and he has shown me a fine old male that was killed on Novem- 

 ber 10, 1894, in Brooks's Pond, an artificial sheet of water less than four acres 

 in extent, in West Medford, not far from the Lower Mystic Pond. 



In Spy Pond, as I am assured by Mr. Warren E. Freeman, the Old-squaw 

 has been seen rather frequently within the past fifteen years, sometimes in flocks 

 containing as many as fifteen or twenty birds each. Mr. Freeman has an adult 

 male, shot in this pond about eight years ago, which, he writes me, was "one of 

 a flock of over twenty-five birds." 



[Camptolaimus labradorius (Gmel.). Labrador Duck. Thomas Morton, writing " O/ 

 Birds, and fei/iereil fovvlrs'" noXeA by him in New England between 1622 and 1630, saj's: 

 "Ducks, there are of three kindes, pide Ducks, gray Ducks, and black Ducks in greate abun- 

 dance."' It has been conjectured that his 'pide' Duck was the Pied or Labrador Duck o£ more 

 recent authors. Although this is hy no means clear, it is not unlikely that he really met with 

 the Labrador Duck, perhaps in Quincy Bay, during his residence at Merrymount. If we may 

 reason from analogy there are other and still better grounds for believing that this interesting 

 species once visited all the larger bays connected with Boston Harbor, as well as the lower 

 reaches of Charles River. The evidence on this head is purely circutnstantial, however, and 

 briefly as follows : (i) Tlie Labrador Duck was found regularly, if only very sparingly, along 

 the coast of Massachusetts, up to 1S50 or a little later, and specimens are known to have been 

 taken at localities no further distant from Boston than Swampscott and Ipswich. (2) Although 

 for the most part a maritime bird, it was by no means confined to salt water. On the con- 

 trary it sometimes wandered far inland, and in the neighborhood of the coast was more or less 

 regularly addicted, at least in the Middle States, to follo-wiiig up the courses 0/ broad tidal 

 streams. Of the latter fact we are assured by Audubon, who states that this bird "at times" 

 ascended the Delaware River "at least as far as Philadelphia,"and in such numbers that he found 

 in the possession of "a bird-stuffer " at Camden "many fine specimens," all of which, we are 

 led to understand, were taken in the river near that place "by baiting fish-hooks with the com- 

 mon mussel. "^ 



If the Pied Duck was given to frequenting the tidal rivers and estuaries of Massachu- 

 setts before they were much disturbed by white men, — as seems probable, — it could scarcely 

 have failed, in those early times, to visit the shoal salt waters of the Back Bay to fish for mus- 

 sels. It may even have alighted — at least occasionally — in some of our larger ponds, to 

 lave its striking black and white plumage in their fresh waters, as the equally sea-loving 

 Scoters and Old-squaws continue to do. It is believed to have become extinct before the 



'Thomas Morton, New EngUsh Canaan, 1637, 67, 68. Ed. C. F. Adams, Jr., 1883, 189, 190. 

 ^ J. J. Audubon, Birds of America, VI, 1843, 329. 



