492 ORNITHOLOGY AND OOLOGY. 



DAFILA ACUTA. Jenyns. 

 The Pintail ; Sprigtail. 



Anas acuta, Linnaeus. Syst. Nat., I. (1766) 202. Wils. Am. Orn., VIII. (1814). 

 Aud. Orn. Biog., III. (1835) 214; V. 615. /&., Birds Am., VI. (1843) 266. 

 Dafila acuta, Bonaparte. List (1838). 

 Anas (boschas) acuta, Nuttall. Man., II. (1834) 386. 



DESCRIPTION. 



Tail of sixteen feathers; bill black above and laterally at the base; the sides 

 and beneath blue ; head and upper part of neck uniform dark-brown, glossed with 

 green and purple behind ; inferior part of neck, breast, and under parts white ; the 

 white of neck passes up to the nape, separating the brown, and itself is divided 

 dorsally by black, which, below, passes into the gray of the back ; the back anteriorly 

 and the sides are finely lined transversely with black and white ; the wings are plain 

 and bluish-gray; the greater coverts with a terminal bar of purplish-buff, below 

 which is a greenish-purple speculum, margined behind by black, and tipped with 

 white; longest tertials striped with silvery and greenish-black; scapulars black, 

 edged with silvery ; crissum and elongated tail feathers black ; the former edged 

 with white. 



Female with only a trace of the markings of the wing ; the green of the specu- 

 lum brownish, with a few green spots; the feathers of the back are brown, with a 

 broad U or V-shaped brownish-yellow bar on each feather anteriorly ; sometimes 

 those bars appear in the shape of broad transverse lines. 



Length, thirty inches ; wing, eleven ; tail, eight and sixty one-hundredths ; tarsus, 

 one and seventy-five one-hundredths; commissure, two and thirty-six one hun- 

 dredths inches. 



Hob. Whole of North America, and Europe. 



This beautiful bird is pretty common on our shores ; and 

 it is much pursued, both for the beauty of its plumage 

 and for the excellence of its flesh. It breeds in the most 

 northern portions of the continent, where, Nuttall says, " it 

 lays eight or nine eggs of a greenish-blue color." It is seen 

 in most abundance in the autumn on our coast, where it 

 appears by the 10th of September, and remains until the 

 last week in October. Wilson says it is a shy and cau- 

 tious bird, feeds in the mud flats, and shallow fresh-water 

 marshes ; but rarely resides on the seacoast. It seldom 

 dives, is very noisy, and has a kind of chattering note. 

 When wounded, they will sometimes dive, and, coming up, 

 conceal themselves under the bow of the boat, moving round 

 as it moves ; are vigilant in giving the alarm on the approach 



