The M^ater-fowl of the Pacific Coast 519 



stirred up. He prefers to sit around in the ponds 

 and muddle, and often spends days at a time in 

 some little hole. But when he does mount the air 

 his black and white, chestnut and blue, with crim- 

 son feet, long neck, and head of burnished green, 

 make him often easy to mistake for a mallard. 



THE GREEN-WINGED TEAL 



The blue-winged teal of the Mississippi Valley, 

 a flyer of wondrous speed and, for his size, the 

 most charming of all eastern ducks, seems lacking 

 on this coast, though some specimens may be 

 found in the North. But the common green- 

 wing is abundant and is apparently the same as 

 in the East. One who has had them hiss through 

 the falling night like a charge of grape-shot, 

 just missing his head to fade in the gather- 

 ing gloom before he can whip his gun into posi- 

 tion, has acquired a love for these teal that no 

 change of their habits can alter. Though he 

 travels in flocks and makes as good time with 

 his rapid wing as elsewhere, the green-wing is not 

 such a factor in general duck-shooting as in the 

 old-time evening flight of the prairies when he 

 added so much to the uproarious tumult that 

 jarred your steadiest nerves. Then so many sprig- 

 tails were riding down the darkness, so many gad- 

 walls plunging out of the fading blue, so many 

 mallards thumping the twilight, you could hardly 



