SHOVELLER. 133 



southward, as in Maryland and North Carolina, it is 

 frequently killed. In many of its ways, as, of course, 

 in its appearance in some respects, it resembles the teals, 

 but it is much less gregarious in its habits. The shov- 

 eller breeds from Texas to Alaska, and I have fre- 

 quently found the nests in Dakota, Montana and Wyo- 

 ming, usually near prairie lakes, often under a bunch 

 of rye grass or a sage brush and usually fairly well con- 

 cealed. There are usually a few feathers and some down 

 in the nest, which contains eight or ten greenish-white 

 eggs. The female sits close, but when startled from 

 her nest flies away without sound and soon disappears. 



The young, when first hatched, do not show the pe- 

 culiar shape of the bill possessed by the adult, this being 

 a later development. Young birds of the first season, 

 when killed in the fall, will be found to have the bill 

 very flexible, so that it can be bent in every direction. 

 The shoveller is a fine table bird, but because of the 

 small numbers that are killed it is not very well known. 



Mr. Trumbull gives as the names for this bird the 

 blue-winged shoveller, red-breasted shoveller, shovel- 

 bill, broady, butler duck — "the bird being so called be- 

 cause of its spoon-like bill, and with reference to a well- 

 known general in the civil war" — cow-frog, spoon-billed 

 widgeon, spoon-billed teal, mud-shoveller and swaddle- 

 bilL In Louisiana the bird is known as mesquin. The 

 note of the shoveller is a weak quack, somewhat like 

 that of the green-winged teal.* 



♦Compare "California Duck Notes," by Robert Erskine Ross, 

 Forest and Stream, Vol. lix, p. 67, July 26, 1902. 



