314 GAME BIRDS. WILD-FOWL AND SHORE BIRDS. 



RUFF {Machetes pugnax). 



Length. — 10 to 12 inches. 



Adult Male. — Face bare in front of eye, with reddish warts; colors varying 

 much, probably no two specimens exactly alike; a large shield-like 

 erectile niff about the neck, conspicuously barred, and the colors vary 

 from chestnut and glossy black streaked with reddish to mottled reddish 

 and buff streaked with buffy white and barred with pure white; sides 

 of rump usually white; bill brown; legs yellow. 



Adult Female. — No ruff; head fully feathered; plumage banded with 

 black and buff, white or reddish; the lower abdomen or ventral region 

 usually pure white. 



Young. — Back and shoulders brownish black; feathers usually bordered 

 with buff; crown yellowish, streaked with black; lower parts unspotted, 

 white before and buff behind. 



Range. — Eastern hemisphere. Breeds from Arctic coast south to Great 

 Britain, Holland, Russia and Siberia; winters throughout Africa, India 

 and Burma; strays occasionally to western hemisphere, from Ontario 

 and Greenland south to Indiana, North Carolina, Barbados and northern 

 South America. 



History. 



The difference in the appearance of the sexes of the Ruff 

 is so great that in Europe the male is known as the Ruff on 

 account of the ruff about his neck, while the female is named 

 the Reeve. 



The bird is an accidental visitor to Massachusetts, perhaps 

 blown here on the wings of some storm or wandering from its 

 habitat in the Old World. The Massachusetts records follow: 

 Mr. Gordon Plummer of Brookline secured a fine young male 

 taken in Chatham, September 11, 1880, which is recorded as 

 the ninth specimen for North America, the third for New 

 England and the second for Massachusetts. The other two 

 New England specimens were females, one taken at Newbury- 

 port, Mass., in 1871,^ and the other taken at Upton, Me., in 

 1874; both now in the Brewster collection. ^ Later, another 

 was taken by Mr. Alfred Dabney, on Nantucket, Mass., late 

 in July, 1901, and is now in the collection of Hon. J. E. Thayer, 

 at Lancaster, Mass.^ 



1 Brewster, William: American Naturalist, May, 1872, p. 306. 



2 Forest and Stream, October 7, 1880, Vol. XV, No. 10, p. 186. 



3 Auk, 1906, p. 98. 



