Ducks booting 133 



flight is over the Great Lakes to the Chesapeake 

 and south. This is the course of those birds 

 wintering on the Atlantic Coast. 



North of the Chesapeake, on the Atlantic, the 

 bird has always been scarce. It is now occasion- 

 ally killed on Long Island by battery gunners. 

 A few are sometimes taken in Barnstable County, 

 southeastern Massachusetts. Dr. Woods has 

 obtained them on the Connecticut River. Two 

 adult males were brought to me, killed on Lake 

 Saltonstall, near New Haven, December 25, 1901. 



Throughout the West canvas-back have been 

 driven from the thickly populated states ; on the 

 rivers and lakes of Illinois they no longer abound. 

 In the prairie states, and in Colorado and Cali- 

 fornia, however, they are still killed in consider- 

 able numbers. They are not superior for the table 

 to many of the commoner ducks. 



In the spring of 1901, late in April, I was sur- 

 prised to see several flocks of canvas-back near 

 Tampico, Mexico. They w^re wilder than the 

 other ducks, but allowed us to approach surpris- 

 ingly near. Throughout the interior of Mexico 

 this bird is common, but does not frequent the 

 smaller sloughs with the thousands of other duck, 

 choosing the small lakes more inaccessible from 

 the ranches. 



The canvas-back is known 'by the names white- 

 back, bull-neck, and in New Orleans, cheval. 



