21ED-BEEASTED MEEGANSEB 87 



wing it is swift and unusually silent. When closely pursued while 

 swinuuing it secures partial concealment by lying low in the water 

 with only its bill and head showing. A wounded bird nearly always 

 uses this ruse. 



The courtship of the Red-breasted Merganser as observed on the 

 New England coast has been described by C. W. Townsend (1911, 

 pp. 341-343) as follows: 



The nuptial performance is always at its best when several drakes are 

 displaying their eharms of movement, voice and plumage, before a single duck, 

 and each vies with the other in the ardor of the courtship. The drake begins 

 by stretching up his long neck so that the white ring is much broadened, and 

 the metallic green head, with its long crest and its narrow red bill, makes a 

 conspicuous object. At once the bill is opened wide and the whole bird stiffly 

 bobs or teters as if on a pivot, in such a way that the breast and the lower part 

 of the neck are immersed, while the tail and posterior part of the body swing 

 upward. . . . All of the motions are stiffly executed, and suggest a formal but 

 ungraceful courtesy. 



The nuptial "song." which is emitted while the bill is open, is a 

 loud, rough and purring, slightly doubled note resembling the syllables 

 da-ah. 



. . . The female merganser . . . sometimes responds by a bobbing which is 

 similar to that of the male, but of considerably less range. . . . She emits a 

 single note at this time, which is somewhat louder . . . and is of a different 

 quality as it is decidedly rasping. . . . When the female responds in this man- 

 ner she appears to be very excited, and the ardor of the drakes is correspond- 

 ingly increased. . . . Every now and then she darts out her neck and dashes 

 at the ring of suitors. . . . During the courtship actions the tail [of the male] 

 is elevated at an angle of forty-five degrees. . . . This bobbing courtship of 

 the males, although sometimes directed toward the female, is as often directed 

 towards another male or even the empty water. The males not infrequently 

 rush at one another with powerful leg-strokes making the water foam about 

 their elevated breasts. Sometimes they raise their wings slightly or splash 

 along violently using both wings and feet for propulsion. Now and then a 

 male pursues a female, and she, to avoid capture, may dive and is at once 

 followed by the male. In flight the female generally precedes by a short 

 interval the male. 



The habit of lying flat in the water and of rising up and flapping 

 the wings is indulged in at all times of the year. 



In Alaska the Red-breasted Merganser breeds from Sitka and 

 Kodiak Island north to Icy Cape and perhaps to Point Barrow (Nel- 

 son, 1887, p. 66). The nests are as a usual thing carefully concealed 

 under dead leaves or in grass, and sheltered by a log or bank. A nest 

 observed by G-rinnell (1900, p. 14) on Chamisso Island, Alaska, was 

 situated on an exposed sea wall about fifty feet above the surf and 

 hidden among clumps of tall grass. The nest often consists largely 

 of down, and the eggs are usually covered over by the female when 



