1S92.] Trumbull, Our Scoters. JC^ 



OUR SCOTERS. 



BY G. TRUMBULL. 



Having devoted a good deal of time to the study of these 

 birds, I venture to call attention to numerous errors which have 

 appeared, and to certain facts which have not ajDpeared, concern- 

 ing them. It is my intention, however, to devote the present 

 article more particularly to the American Scoter, and to follow it 

 at a later date with additional notes concerning the White-winged 

 and Surf Scoters. The colors (in a marked degree transitory 

 after death) of the bills, eyes, and feet, I have noted in each case 

 within a very few minutes after the bird was shot. 



It seems strange we should so long have neglected to familia- 

 rize ourselves more fully with the colors and certain other char- 

 acteristics of these widely distributed and easily secured species. 

 They present such exceptionally favorable opportunities for 

 studv, particularly along ovu^ sea coast, where in spring and fall 

 men and boys slaughter them by hundreds and cripple them by 

 thousands. They are also reached without much difficulty during 

 the winter months, and a few, as is well known, tarry with us 

 throughout the summer.* 



American Scoter (Gidemia americana). 



Though the inaccuracies of former descriptions, to which I 

 would here point, are but indirectly connected with the plumage, 

 perhaps I had better describe, wdth the exception of the well- 

 known dress of the adult male, all the variations in this bird's ap- 

 pearance which I have myself noted. Indeed I do not see how I 

 can well emphasize facts which should be emphasized, without 

 being thus tiresome. 



I have failed to witness most of the phases through which the 

 male's bill passes while developing from the form of the female's* 

 into the swollen dimensions and brilliant coloring of the old 



*Some of those which remain are probably of the superannuated and sterile class, 

 but very many of them are convalescent or recovered survivors of the last shooting 

 season, pensioners, as the gunners call them, which at the time of the vernal migra- 

 tion were in too crippled a condition to fly with their fellows. 



