90 GAME BIRDS. WILD-FOWL AND SHORE BIRDS. 



EUROPEAN TEAL {Nettion crecca). 



Length. — 14 inches. 



Adult Male. — Like Green-winged Teal, hut no white crescent before wing; 

 green band in chestnut of head behind the eye, bordered in front with 

 yellowish white; barring of sides and upper parts much coarser than in 

 the American species; long scapulars as well as inner secondaries creamy 

 white, black-bordered externally; these form a conspicuous white streak 

 along upper part of wing. 



Female. — Like female of the Green-winged Teal; the bars and margins of 

 the back feathers are of deeper hue; the sides of head, neck and throat 

 deep buff, and usually darker than those of the American species. 



Range. — Northern part of eastern hemisphere. Occasional in North 

 America; recorded from the x\leutian Islands, California, Greenland, 

 Labrador, Nova Scotia, Maine, New York, Massachusetts, Connecti- 

 cut and Virginia. 



History, 

 The European Teal has been rated as a wanderer from the 

 eastern hemisphere, but since the first edition of this vohime was 

 written, Mr. A. C. Bent, who visited the Aleutian Islands in 

 1911, has expressed the belief that the common Teal breeding 

 on those islands is the present species.^ Teal were collected 

 on the western and central islands and every male taken was a 

 European Teal. The females so closely resemble those of the 

 Green-winged Teal that it is difficult to separate them. Two 

 males from these islands, in the National Museum, were found 

 to be referable to crecca. Mr. Bent failed to find evidence that 

 the Green-winged Teal, which is common on the Alaskan main- 

 land, breeds on the Aleutian Islands. In view of this it seems 

 quite probable that the birds of this species taken in New 

 England may have come across the continent from the Aleutian 

 Islands in migration. The following Massachusetts records 

 seem reliable: About 1855, a specimen, which was killed in 

 Massachusetts, was sent to Mr. E. A. Samuels. An adult male 

 was taken, March 17, 1890, on Muskeget Island, and is now in 

 the Brewster collection. An adult male was caught in a steel 

 trap about February ^0, 1896, in Sagamore, by Rev. E. E. 

 Phillips, and is also in the Brewster collection.^ Several speci- 

 mens have been recorded from New York. 



1 Smithsonian Misc. Coll., Vol. 56, No. 32, Feb. 12, 1912, pp. 11, 12. 



- Howe, Reginald Heber, and Allen, Glover Morrill: Birds of Massachusetts, 1901, p. 52. 



