BIRDS OF MINNESOTA, 73 



with eggs in it, but have been quite content to discover the fe- 

 male and very young, in the third week in June. Others have 

 on several occasions obtained the eggs and female with them. 

 The nest is built very loosely of grasses and reeds, or rather 

 coarse weeds, and is placed on the ground close to the water 

 and well concealed by sedge, or other rank vegetation. More 

 frequently it is located in a dense growth of wild rice. 



The eggs are white with a tinge of stone color, and large for 

 the relative size of the duck. No species of its kind more ef- 

 fectually conceals its nest and eggs, seldom leaving them 

 without covering the latter with feathers and debris. They 

 retire from our latitude by the last week of October oftentimes, 

 yet I have found them still later in exceptional seasons. Dr. 

 Hvoslef reports them at Lanesboro on the 20th of that month. 

 I found them common at Herman at a little later date in 1886, 

 and Mr. Washburn reports them the same at Dead lake in Ot- 

 ter Tail "betw^een the 10th and 26th the year previous." 



SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. 



Bill grayish-blue; top of head and nape black; sides of head 

 below the eyes, with the chin, pure opaque-white; lower part 

 of neck all around, entire upper parts, and upper portion of 

 sides, chestnut red; under parts generally lustrous grayish- 

 white, with an occasional brownish tinge; crissum pure white; 

 wings brown, without speculum, finely and almost inappre- 

 ciably sprinkled with gray; tail nearly black. 



Length. 16; wing, 5.80; tarsus, 1.25; commissure, 1.80. 



Habitat, North America. 



CHEN HYPERBOREA (Pallas). (169.) 

 LESSER SNOW GOOSE. 



In its favorite localities daring the autumn especially, this 

 species eclipses any other of the Goose kind for numbers. 

 When visiting Grant county in October, 1884, in company with 

 my son, where we were joined by our friend Mr. P. H. Clague 

 for a grand Goose hunt, we met this species in force. Any- 

 thing like accurate estimates of numbers in a given flock of 

 any kind of birds must be practically impossible, yet, approxi- 

 mation enough to convey a good general idea has been reached 

 by Wilson and others, by subdividing. At a glance the mass 

 may be instantly halved, quartered, eighthed, and sixteenthed, 

 when its count becomes possible in many cases. By such a 

 method of calculation I made an estimate of a flock containing 

 quite nearly 300 geese, and checking down the different flocks 



