MERGUS. 203 



marked with reddish brown ; flanks dull chestnut brown, tinged with warm buff 

 and vermiculated with darker brown ; bill much swollen at the base, pale 

 ultramarine blue in colour ; irides dark brown ; legs dull blackish plumbeous. 



Le7igth.— i']-i inches ; wing 6-3; tail 4*3; tarsus 1-35; culmen 1-9; 

 gape 1*82. 



The adult female differs from the male in wanting the clear white on the 

 head and in being much richer in plumage ; crown and nape blackish brown 

 with a chestnut tinge ^ sides of the head similarly coloured but marked with 

 white ; a streak of white passes below the eye nearly to the nape ; and the 

 chin and upper throat are white slightly dotted with blackish brown. General 

 colour of the upper parts darker than in the male, being deep chestnut red ; 

 under parts as in the male. Bill dull plumbeous ; irides dark brown ; legs 

 plumbeous black. 



Family, MERGID^.. 



Bill straight, much compressed, narrow, convex towards the tip ; edges of the 

 mandibles strongly toothed; nostrils median, longitudinal; front toes well 

 webbed, hind tee lobed ; tarsus short.; wings pointed; tail short, wedge-shaped ; 

 faead sub-crested.. 



MergUS, Linn. 

 Bill slender, tip hooked; first and second quills longest. 



242. Mergus serrator {Linn.), P. E. 207; Naum. F.9^/. t. 325; 



Gould, B, Eur. pi. 385 ; Str. F. ix. p. 268 ; Hiwie, Game Birds, iii. p. 305 ; 

 Murray, Vert. ZooL, Sind, p. 308 ; id., Avif. Brit. Ifid. ii. p. 704, 

 No. 1406, — The Reb-breasted Merganser. 



Adult Male. — The whole head, chin, throat and the neck all round, for 

 about one inch black, glossed with metallic green on the sides of the head 

 and a bluer sheen elsewhere ; along the middle of the crown and occiput runs 

 a comparatively narrow line of excessively narrow, more or less disintegrated- 

 webbed, elongate feathers, of which the longest are over three inches in length, 

 forming a conspicuous crest; the rest of the neck all round, to just the base, 

 pure white, with a conspicuous narrow black line down the centre of its hinder 

 aspect ; at the base of the neck a light brownish rufous, or pale brownish 

 chestnut band, extends all round, narrower behind and broadening into a crop- 

 patch. This band is streaked longitudinally with blackish brown. The 

 interscapulary region and upper back, the extreme sides of the breast and 

 scapulars velvet black ; outside the scapulars and between these and the wing 

 there is a conspicuous patch of long white feathers; the primaries and their 

 coverts (which latter are darkest), the shoulder of the wing and lesser coverts 

 just above the carpus blackish brown, the rest of the lesser and median coverts 

 pure white; the secondary greater coverts black, all, except the first three, very 

 broadly tipped with white, but leaving a portion of their black bases visible below 



