gO GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA. 
from Indian Head northwesterly to Fort Yukon in Alaska. The 
country northwest of Edmonton suits it well, as there are many 
marshes full of Scevpus lacustris and tall grasses,among which it 
likes to breed. 
BREEDING Notes.—Fairly common at Reaburn, in Manitoba, 
and at Buffalo Lake, Alberta. In both places eggs and birds were 
procured. (Dpfie.) Nests are always in the reeds growing in 
the water; they are very bulky, and made of grass and reeds 
lined with down. A nest of this species was found on a musk- 
rat house ina marsh at Crane Lake, June 15th, 1894. It contained 
seven eggs. (Sfreadborough.) 1 have found this species breeding 
at Long Lake and Shoal Lake in Manitoba, and at Crane Lake 
in Assiniboia. It breeds also throughout Alberta. The only 
other species of ducks’ eggs they can be compared with are 
the American and Barrow’s Golden-eye, which they greatly 
resemble, both in regard to size and tint. The Canvas-back is a 
late breeder, nesting toward the latter partof June. I found a 
nest containing seven eggs at Long Lake, Manitoba, June 2oth, 
1893. The nest was built, as usual, in the centre of a tuft of rushes 
in shallow water, as this duck seldom nests in the grass like the 
Pintail, Shoveller, and Teal. (Raine.) 
Scaups, Canvas-backs and Red-heads undoubtedly breed in the 
same marshes, and with them the Ruddy Duck. In the marshes 
at Crane Lake, between June 12th and 2oth, the writer found nests 
of all four species, with eggs of one or two other species in them. 
The bulky nest mentioned under the Greater Scaup was likely 
built by a Canvas-back, but the larger number of the eggs were 
those of a Scaup. 
MUSEUM SPECIMENS. 
Three specimens. One female and two males. One was shot 
in Toronto marsh; one at Edmonton, Alberta, and the other in 
Victoria Harbour, Vancouver Island, the last two by Spread- 
borough. 
Three sets of eggs, taken at Edmonton, Alberta, in the spring 
of 1897. 
148. American Scaup Duck. Big Black-head. 
Aythya martla (LINN.) BoIE. 1822. 
A very rare straggler in Newfoundland ; rare migrant in Nova 
Scotia, and occasionally taken in New Brunswick. Spreadborough 
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