390 ANATID^E. 



to procure snails, tadpoles, and insects. On two occasions 

 the parents would not abandon the young, although I ex- 

 pected that the noises which I made would have induced 

 them to do so ; they both followed their offspring into the 

 net which I had set for them. The young all died in two 

 days, when I restored the old birds to liberty. 



"The Hooded Mergansers which leave the United 

 States, take their departure from the 1st of March to the 

 middle of May ; and I am induced to believe that, pro- 

 bably, one third of them tarry for the purpose of breed- 

 ing on the margins of several of our great lakes. When 

 migrating, they fly at a great height, in small loose flocks, 

 without any regard to order. Their notes consist of a 

 kind of rough grunt, variously modulated, but by no 

 means musical, and resembling the syllables croo, croo, crook. 

 The female repeats it six or seven times in succession, 

 when she sees her young in danger. The same noise is 

 made by the male, either when courting on the water, 

 or as he passes on wing near the hole where the female is 

 laying one of her eggs." 



In the adult male the bill is dull reddish-brown ; the 

 irides yellow ; head and upper part of the neck black ; 

 top of the head ornamented with a half-circular crest, the 

 posterior half of which is white edged with black ; back 

 and wing-coverts black ; primaries, secondaries, rump, and 

 tail-feathers dark brown ; scapulars and tertials elongated, 

 slender, and white, edged with black ; lower part of neck 

 in front white, with the points of two crescentic bands 

 descending from the upper part of the back, and directed 

 forwards ; belly, vent and under tail-coverts white ; sides 

 waved with yellowish-brown ; legs and feet dull red. 

 The whole length of the bird is nineteen inches ; the wing, 

 from the point to the end of the longest quill-feather, seven 

 inches and a half. 



