WILD FOWL. 



97 



species ; it is known on the Long Island shore as a Coot, and is 

 shot solely for sport. He is briofly described in Wilson's Orni- 

 thology, as follows : 



" This Duck is peculiar to America,* and altogether confined 

 to the bays and shores of the sea, particularly where the waves 

 roll over the sandy beach. Their food consists principally of 

 those small bivalve shell-fish already described, spovit-fish, and 

 others that lie in the sand near its surface. For these they divo 

 almost constantly, both in the sandy bays and amidst (he 

 tumbling surf They seldom or never \isit the salt marshes. 

 They continue on our shores during the winter, and leave us 

 early in May, for their breeding places in the North. Their 

 skins are remarkably strong, and their flesh coarse, tasting of 

 fish. They are shy birds, not easily approached, and are com- 

 mon in winter along the whole coast, from the River St. Law- 

 rence to Florida. 



" The length of this species is twenty inches ; extent thirty- 

 two inches ; the bill is yellowish-red, elevated at the base, and 

 marked on the side of the upper mandible with a large square 

 patch of black, preceded by another space of a pearl color ; the 

 part of the bill thus marked swells, or projects, considerably 

 from the common surface ; the nostrils are large and pervious ; 

 the sides of the bill broadly serrated or toothed ; both mandi- 

 bles are furnished with a nail at the extremity; irides white or 

 very pale cream ; whole plumage, a shining black, marked on 

 the crown and hind head with two triangular spaces of pure 

 white ; the plumage on both these spots is shorter and thinner 

 than the rest ; legs and feet blood-red ; membrane of the web- 

 bed feet black; the primary quills are of a deep dusky-brown. 



" On dissection, the gullet was found to be gradually enlarged 

 to the gizzard, which was altogether filled with broken shell- 



* " One or two instances of this bird teing killed on the shores of Great Bri- 

 tain, have occurred ; and, as an occasional visitant, it will be fig-ured in the 

 concluding number of Mr. Selby's Illustrations of British Ornithologi/. It is 

 also occasionally met with on the continent of Europe, but generally in high lat- 

 itudes, aud, though uufrequent elsewhere, it is not entirely confined to America." 



7 



