THE AMERICAN EIDER. 613 
decidedly numerous anywhere on the lake front, and may venture well inland 
upon the smaller lakes and reservoirs, to the Ohio River, and several winters 
may pass without another visitation. Specimens have been taken from the 
gill nets off Lorain in five fathoms of water, where they had dived for fish 
and become tangled in the nets and drowned. Several spent the winter oi 
1901-02 on the lake shore in Lorain County” (Jones). 
The Old-squaw obtains this name and others like it from its habit of 
vivacious jabbering while in flock upon the water. It has besides a peculiar 
and rather musical call-note, given as a salutation or summons while the bird 
is on the wing, a sort of nasal trumpeting quite impossible to represent. The 
birds are graceful and very swift fliers, and the elongated tail serves a useful 
purpose in helping to check flight, enabling the bird to alight quickly. A 
pair of them seated upon the water are handsome enough to merit the name 
applied to them by the hunters of the Pacific Coast, “Lord and Lady,” Their 
fief is some icy cliff or bleak island in the far north, and they quit home only 
reluctlantly, upon compulsion of the great white scourge. 
No. 302. 
AMERICAN EIDER. 
A. O. U. No. 160. Somateria dresseri Sharpe. 
Description.—Adult male: ‘Top of head (including top of loral space) 
black, divided on hind crown by narrow median greenish white; the remainder 
of head, neck, and breast, upper back, and lower back on sides of rump, scapulars, 
lesser wing-coverts, and tertiaries white, tinged with cream-buff or pale vinaceous 
on breast, and with pale green (oil green) on the head behind and on sides, and 
along the lower border of coronal black for nearly the whole length; rest of 
plumage deep sooty brown or brownish black; culmen slightly concave; angle of 
bill on side of forehead broad and rounded; bill at least .45 (11.4) wide across 
iniddle. Adult female and immature: All ochraceous on head-and neck finely 
streaked with dusky; darker on crown and nape; under-parts sooty gray barred 
with lighter and darker; the breast strongly tinged with brownish; above dusky, 
heavily tipped with brownish and buffy-ochraceous ;—of obscure coloration, but 
bill and characters as in male; smaller. Length 20.00-26.00 (508.-660.4) wing 
11.50 (292.1); tail 3.50 (88.9); bill from posterior angle of nostril to tip ’1.42 
(36.1) ; from anterior extremity of loral feathering to apex of frontal angle 1.85 
(47.); tarsus 1.75 (44.5). 
Recognition Marks.—Mallard to Brant size; black and white plumage with 
light green on hind head; feathers of head dense and puffy ; feathers of lore reach- 
ing as far as nostril; angle of bill on side of forehead broad and rounded. 
Nesting.—Does not breed in Ohio. Nest, on the ground, in cranny of cliff, 
or in dense beach grass; heavily lined with down. Eggs, 4-8, sometimes 10, pale 
bluish or pale olive green. Av. size, 3.00 x 2.00 (76.2 x 50.8). 
