Vol. XVIII 

 1 90 1 



n Bent, N^esiii/g Habits of Auatidce in N. Dakota. 3 S ■'^ 



Red-winged Blackbirds nested abundantly on the outskirts and 

 Long-billed Marsh Wrens were breeding in the thick flags. 



The alkaline lakes form still another feature of this interesting 

 region. The larger lakes are, most of them, more or less alkaline, 

 and the drinking water in many of the towns is sufficiently alka- 

 line to have a flat, unpleasant taste, making it unfit to drink for 

 persons not accustomed to it. The strongly alkaline lakes are 

 met with occasionally in the prairies, more commonly in the west- 

 ern part of the State. No vegetation of any kind grows in these 

 lakes and the shores are lined with thick, heavy, sticky mud, very 

 difficult to walk through and covered with a whitish alkaline 

 deposit. 



These mud flats form excellent feeding grounds for the migrat- 

 ing Limicola; and in the wilder portions of the state the Avocets 

 select such places for their breeding grounds. The Golden 

 Plover migrate through this country in large numbers ; the last of 

 them were just about leaving when we arrived. Semipalmated, 

 White-rumped, and Pectoral Sandpipers were often seen in small 

 flocks about the lakes, as well as in the sloughs and on the 

 prairies, also a few Yellow-legs and Turnstones ; possibly these 

 were barren or young birds not intending to breed this season. 



These alkaline lakes are evidently not distasteful to the ducks, 

 as we often saw large numbers of Mallards, Pintails, and Shov- 

 ellers swimming about in them. In fact every body of water 

 that we passed was frequented more or less by the commoner 

 species of the Anatidse. 



With this brief summary of the general characteristics of the 

 region, we will proceed to take up the nesting habits of the ducks 

 in detail. 



Lophodytes cucuUatus {Linn.). Hooded Merganser. 



This is one of the rarer ducks in the region we visited though 

 it is fairly common along the timbered portion of the Sheyenne 

 River. I shot one specimen in Steele County on June 12, which 

 proved to be a young male in the plumage resembling the female. 

 We saw a flock of six in Nelson County on June 15, and a single 

 bird there on the i6th. These birds were probably not breeding 

 birds, as they were in the larger lakes a long distance from any 

 timber. Dr. Bishop and Mr. Job visited the Sheyenne River 



