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506 ORNITHOLOGY AND OOLOGY. 
“The food of the Scaup Duck I have found to consist of 
small fry, cray-fishes, and a mixture of such grasses as here 
and there grow along the beds of our rivers.”” — AUDUBON. 
It is an expert diver, and can remain a considerable time 
under water. When wounded, it often dives, and, clinging 
to the weeds or rocks at the bottom of the water, remains 
there until dead; and often the bird does not rise to the 
surface until the whole warmth of it has left its body, when 
the muscles, losing their contraction, permit the bird to float 
off. Very often it does not come to the surface at all, when 
thus wounded and dying, but remains like a stone on the 
bottom until its parts become separated by the waves, or by 
crabs or other crustaceans. Of the breeding habits and 
nest of this bird I am ignorant. I have but a single egg in 
my collection, from Youkon. This is ovoidal in form, of 
a dirty pale-drab color, and is 2.25 inch in length, and 
1.60 at its greatest breadth. 
AYTHYA, Bors. 
Aythya, Bore, Isis (1822). (Type Anas ferina, L.) 
Very similar to Fuligula in general characters of shape; the bill elongated, longer 
than the head, and about equal to the middle toe with the claw; the bill more 
slender in one species, the nail smaller and less decurved; the bill higher at base, 
and the upper outline nearly straight to beyond the end of the nostrils, which do 
not quite reach the middle of the bill; colors similar to those of Fuligula; the head 
and neck red; tail of fourteen feathers. 
AYTHYA AMERICANA, — Bonaparte. 
The Red Head. 
Anas ferina, Wilson. Am. Orn., VIII. (1814) 84. 
Fuligula ferina, Nuttall. Man., II. (1834) 484. Aud. Orn. Biog., IV. (1835) 
198. Jb., Birds Am., VI. (1848) 311. 
DESCRIPTION. 
Bill as long as the head, broad, blue, the end black; the region anterior to the 
nostrils dusky; head, and neck for more than half its length, brownish-red, glossed 
above and behind with violaceous-red; rest of neck and body anterior to the shoul- 
ders, lower part of back and tail coverts, black; beneath white, sprinkled with gray 
and black anterior to the crissum; the sides, interscapulars, and scapulars finely 
lined with undulating black and white in nearly equal proportions, imparting a 
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