Vol. XXVII 

 1910 



1 Brewster, The Red-legged Black Duck. 331 



would settle the question at once. The males become exceedingly 

 shy and difficult to find in the breeding season and nobody wants to 

 slaughter brooding females even if nests be found." He goes on to 

 say, however, that "before spring shooting was abolished some 

 years ago on Long Island, New York, a number of freshly killed 

 birds were sent me that scarcely needed dissection to prove them 

 breeding birds. They were shot at various dates in April and all 

 had red legs." To those unfamiliar with certain known facts of 

 migration the evidence furnished by the two sentences last quoted 

 may seem important, but that an ornithologist of Dr. Dwdght's 

 knowledge and experience can attach any special value or signifi- 

 cance to it is indeed surprising. He must know% of course, that in 

 April — or May, for that matter — thousands of birds w^iose indi- 

 vidual summer homes lie further to the northward may be found 

 lingering in the New England and the Middle States at dates when 

 others of the same or of closely allied species are sitting on their 

 nests and eggs in the same neighborhood. Indeed it is unsafe to 

 assume that the mere presence of migratory birds of any kind at 

 localities not near the extreme northern limits of their summer 

 ranges, affords any proof that they are breeding in such localities 

 unless they occur there within that limited period in early summer 

 when the waves of migration are wholly at rest. In the case of 

 ducks, moreover, physical evidences of "breeding condition," 

 such as Dr. Dwight may be assumed to refer to in what he says of 

 his Long Island specimens, have apparently little or no real signifi- 

 cance of the kind he gives us to understand. For although Golden- 

 eyes and Goosanders do not lay their eggs in northern New England 

 before late April or early May and are not known or suspected to 

 ever breed anywhere in Massachusetts, they have been seen copulat- 

 ing in March near Boston and in the waters about Cape Cod. 



Perhaps, after all, Dr. Dwight is better informed about some of 

 these matters than the passages just quoted would seem to imply, for 

 he follow^s them by the admission that " it was not until the present 

 year that I secured the last link required in my chain of evidence." 

 This, it appears, was furnished by a freshly-killed bird shot "on 

 Long Island, June 11, 1909." It had "the red legs and other 

 characters supposed to belong to the northern 'form' alone" and 

 "evidently was recentlv mated." Hence Dr. Dwight insists that 



