rm 
THE HOODED MERGANSER. 529 
LOPHODYTES, RetcHart. 
Lophodytes, REICHART, Syst. Ay. (1852). 
Bill shorter than the head, black; serrations compressed, low, short, inserted 
obliquely on the edge of bill; the point truncated, and not recurved nor acute; tail 
more than half the wings; tarsi short, half the feet; head with a much compressed, 
vertical, circular, and erect crest. 
But a single species of this genus is known to naturalists. 
LOPHODYTES CUCULLATUS.— Reichart. 
The Hooded Merganser. 
Mergus cucullatus, Linneus. Syst. Nat., I. (1766) 207. Wils. Am. Orn., VIII. 
79. Nutt. Man., If. 465. Aud. Orn. Biog., III. (1885) 246; V. 619. J0., Birds 
Am., VI. (1843) 402. 
Lophodytes cucullatus, Reichart. Syst. Av. (1852). 
DESCRIPTION. 
Head with an elongated, compressed, semicircular crest; anterior extremity of 
nostril reaching not quite as far as the middle of commissure; frontal feathers ex- 
tending nearly as far as half the distance from lateral feathers to nostril; the latter 
much beyond the feathers on side of lower mandible; bill shorter than head. 
Male.— Bill black; head, neck, and back, black; under parts and centre of 
crest white; sides chestnut-brown, barred with black; white anterior to the wing, 
crossed by two black crescents; lesser coverts gray; white speculum with a basal 
and median black bar; black tertials streaked centrally with white; iris yellow. 
Female. — With a shorter and more pointed crest; the head and neck reddish- 
brown; the back without pure-black; the sides without transverse bars; the white 
of wings less extended. 
Length, seventeen and fifty one-hundredths inches; wing, seven and ninety one- 
hundredths; tarsus, one and twenty one-hundredths; commissure, one and ninety. 
eight one-hundredths inches. 
Hab. — Whole of North America. 
This beautiful bird is less common than either of the 
other Mergansers on our coast and in our bays and inlets, 
in autumn, winter, and early spring. In the summer, it 
resides in the interior, where it breeds by the lakes and 
other bodies of fresh water; building its nest in holes in 
high dead trees, or on the tops of stubs, thirty or forty feet 
from the ground, exactly like the Sheldrake. The eggs are 
from nine to twelve or fourteen in number, usually about 
ten. They are of a clear-white color, although their surface 
is, in some specimens, stained by the moisture from the 
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