Species X. ANAS SPONSA. 



SUMMER DUCK, or WOOD DUCK. 



[Plate LXX. Fig. 3, Male.] 



Le Canard d' EU, BRrss. vi.. p. 351, 11, p. 32, fig. 2. — Le beau Canard hupjj£, 

 Bdff. IX., p. 245.— PL Enl. 980, <m.— Summer Duck, Catesby, i.. pi. 97.— Edw. 

 pi. \0\.—Arct. Zool. No. 943.— Lath. Sijn. iii., p. 546.* 



This most beautiful of all our Duck,s, has probably no superior 

 among its whole tribe for richness and variety of colors. It is called 

 the Wood Duck, from the circumstance of its breeding in hollow trees ; 

 and the Summer Duck, from remaining with us chiefly during the sum- 

 mer. It is familiarly known in every quarter of the United States, 

 from Florida to Lake Ontario, in the neighborhood of which latter place 

 I have myself met with it in October. It rarely visits the seashore, or 

 salt marshes ; its favorite haunts being the solitary deep and muddy 

 creeks, ponds, and mill dams of the interior, making its nest frequently 

 in old hollow trees that overhang the water. 



The Summer Duck is equally well known in Mexico and many of the 

 West India Islands. During the whole of our winters they are occa- 

 sionally seen in the states south of the Potomac. On the tenth of 

 January I met with two on a creek near Petersburg in Virginia. In 

 the more northern districts, however, they are migratory. In Pennsyl- 

 vania the female usually begins to lay late in April or early in May. 

 Instances have been known where the nest was constructed of a few 

 sticks laid in a fork of the branches ; usually, however, the inside of a 

 hollow tree is selected for this purpose. On the eighteenth of May I 

 visited a tree containing the nest of a Summer Duck, on the banks of 

 Tuckahoe river, New Jersey. It was an old grotesque white oak, whose 

 top had been torn off by a storm. It stood on the declivity of the bank, 

 about twenty yards from the water. In this hollow and broken top, 

 and about six feet down, on the soft decayed wood, lay thirteen eggs, 

 snugly covered with down, doubtless taken from the breast of the bird. 

 These eggs were of an exact oval shape, less than those of a hen, the 

 surface exceedingly fine grained, and of the highest polish and slightly _ 

 yellowish, greatly resembling old polished ivory. The egg measured 



* Anas spoiisa, Gmel. Si/st. i., p. 539, No. 43. — Iiid. Orn. p. 876, No. 97. 



(88) 



