506 ORNITHOLOGY AND OOLOGY. 



"The food of the Scaup Duck I have found to consist of 

 small fry, cray-fishes, and a mixture of such grasses as here 

 and there grow along the beds of our rivers." AUDUBON. 

 It is an expert diver, and can remain a considerable time 

 under water. When wounded, it often dives, and, clinging 

 to the weeds or rocks at the bottom of the water, remains 

 there until dead ; and often the bird does not rise to the 

 surface until the whole warmth of it has left its body, when 

 the muscles, losing their contraction, permit the bird to float 

 off. Very often it does not come to the surface at all, when 

 thus wounded and dying, but remains like a stone on the 

 bottom until its parts become separated by the waves, or by 

 crabs or other crustaceans. Of the breeding habits and 

 nest of this bird I am ignorant. I have but a single egg in 

 my collection, from Youkon. This is ovoidal in form, of 

 a dirty pale-drab color, and is 2.25 inch in length, and 

 1.60 at its greatest breadth. 



AYTHYA, BOIE. 



Aythya, BOIE, Isis (1822). (Type Anas ferina, L.) 



Very similar to FvMgula in general characters of shnpe ; the bill elongated, longer 

 than the head, and about equal to the middle toe with the claw; the bill more 

 slender in one species, the nail smaller and less decurved ; the bill higher at base, 

 and the upper outline nearly straight to beyond the end of the nostrils, which do 

 not quite reach the middle of the bill; colors similar to those of Fullgula; the head 

 and neck red; tail of fourteen feathers. 



AYTHYA AMERICANA. Bonaparte. 

 The Red Head. 



Anas ferina, Wilson. Am. Orn., VIII. (1814) 84. 



Fuligula ferinb, Nuttall. Man., II. (1834) 434. Aud. Orn. Biog., IV. (1835) 

 198. Ib., Birds Am., VI. (1843) 311. 



DESCRIPTION. 



Bill as long as the head, broad, blue, the end black ; the region anterior to the 

 nostrils dusky ; head, and neck for more than half its length, brownish-red, glossed 

 above and behind with violaceous-red; rest of neck and body anterior to the shoul- 

 ders, lower part of back and tail coverts, black ; beneath white, sprinkled with gray 

 and black anterior to the crissum; the sides, interscapulars, and scapulars finely 

 lined with undulating black and white in nearly equal proportions, imparting a 



