AMERICAN AVIDGEON. 85 



These birds are frequently brouglit to the market of Baltimore, and 

 generally bring a good price, their flesh being excellent. They are of 

 a lively frolicsome disposition, and with proper attention might easily 

 be domesticated. 



The Widgeon or Bald-pate measures twenty-two inches in length, and 

 thirty inches in extent, the bill is of a slate color, the nail black; the 

 front and crown cream colored, sometimes nearly white, the feathers 

 inflated ; from the eye backwards to the middle of the neck behind, ex- 

 tends a band of deep glossy green gold and purple; throat, chin, and 

 sides of the neck before, as far as the green extends, dull yellowish 

 white, thickly speckled with black ; breast and hind part of the neck 

 hoai'y bay, running in under the wings, where it is crossed with fine 

 waving lines of black ; whole belly white ; vent black ; back and sca- 

 pulars black, thickly and beautifully crossed with undulating lines of 

 vinous bay;. lower part of the back more dusky; tail coverts long, 

 pointed, whitish, crossed as the back ; tail pointed, brownish ash, the 

 two middle feathers an inch longer than the rest, and tapering; 

 shoulder of the wing brownish ash, wing coverts immediately below 

 white, forming a large spot ; primaries brownish ash, middle seconda- 

 ries black glossed with green, forming the speculum ; tertials black 

 edged with white, between which and the beauty spot several of the 

 secondaries are white. 



The female has the whole head and neck yellowish white, thickly 

 speckled with black, very little rufous on the breast ; the back is dark 

 brown. The young males, as usual, very much like the females during 

 the first season, and do not receive their full plumage until the second 

 year. They are also subject to a regular change every spring and 

 autumn. 



Note. — A few of these birds breed annually in the marshes in the 

 neighborhood of Duck Creek, in the state of Delaware. An acquaint- 

 ance brought me thence, in the month of June, an egg, which had been 

 taken from a nest situated in a cluster of alders ; it was very much of • 

 the shape of the common Duck's egg; the color a dirty white ; length 

 two inches and a quarter, breadth one inch and five-eighths. The nest 

 contained eleven eggs. 



This species is seen on the Delaware as late as the first week of May. 

 On the thirtieth of April last, I observed a large flock of them, accom- 

 panied by a few Mallards and Pintails, feeding upon the mud-flats, at 

 the lower end of League Island, below Philadelphia. In the fresh-water 

 ponds, situated in the neighborhood of the river St. John, in East 

 Florida, they find an abundance of food during the winter ; and they 

 become excessively fat. It is needless to add that they are excellent 

 eating. — G. Ord. 



