THE GADWALL, 497 
distinct; head and neck brownish-yellow, spotted with dusky; the belly with a 
decided chestnut tinge; iris reddish-orange. 
Length, twenty inches; wing, nine and fifty one-hundredths; tarsus, one and 
thirty-eight one-hundredths ; commissure, three and two one-hundredths inches. 
The Shoveller is a rare species on the coast of New Eng- 
land; but two or three are taken in a season, and it is 
rarely that one is found here in the mature plumage. It 
is as often found in fresh-water ponds and streams as in the 
creeks and bays near the shore. It breeds in the mosti 
northern portions of the eastern coast; but, according to 
Mr. Audubon, it passes the season of incubation “from 
Texas westward to the Columbia River, thence to the fur 
countries.” Says Nuttall, “Soon after March, according 
to Baillou, they disperse through the fens in France to 
breed, and select the same places with the Summer Teal ; 
choosing with them large tufts of rushes, making a nest of 
withered grass in the most boggy and difficult places 
of access, near waters. The eggs are twelve to fourteen, 
of a very pale greenish-yellow: the female sits twenty- 
four or twenty-five days.” 
The Spoonbill feeds, like the other fresh-water ducks, on 
various aquatic insects and tadpoles; but, unlike the Teals, 
eats but few seeds of aquatic plants. A specimen that I 
examined, killed in Plymouth County, Mass., had its stom- 
ach filled with small pieces of some aquatic roots, and one 
or two tadpoles: there were also fragments of small crusta- 
ceans, but so small that it was impossible to identify them. 
CHAULELASMUS, Gray. 
Chaulelasmus, G. R. GRAY (1838). (Type Anas strepera, L.) 
Bill as long as the head; the lower edge about as long as the outer toe, and 
longer than the tarsus; the lamelle distinctly visible below the edge of the bill. 
CHAULELASMUS STREPERUS. — Gray. 
The Gadwall; Gray Duck, 
Anas strepera, Linneus, Wilson, and others. 
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