INTRODUCTION TO BIRD KEY. 



In preparing the present Key, I have striven to make it as simple 

 and non-technical as possible, my object being to enable any one 

 totally unfamiliar with birds to identify with comparative ease any 

 species of the Florida water birds. Let us assume, for example, that 

 a young man has killed a duck and wishes to identify it ; he turns 

 over a few pages of the Key until he tinds a figure of a bird which 

 resembles his. He then measures his specimen and hnds that the 

 length of his bird is i6 inches and the length of the wing is 7.40 

 inches. He tinds that the ducks are divided into groups, and the 

 group to which his duck would seem to belong was the one com- 

 prising birds having a lobe or flap on the little hind toe, the belly 

 white, and which show more or less white or gra3nsh white on the 

 head. In this group he flnds there are eleven species, but onlv four 

 of them which approximate near enough in size to by anv possibility 

 be his duck. These are the Ruddy Duck, the two Scaup Ducks, 

 and the Ring-necked Duck. Upon reading the description of these 

 birds he finds that, as his duck is not chestnut and the tail feathers 

 are not stiff and pointed, it cannot be the Ruddy Duck. Of the three 

 remaining species two have the speculum white, the third has it gray. 

 As his duck has the speculum gray it must, therefore, be a female 

 Ring-necked Duck. To be absolutely positive of this he turns over 

 to the latter part of the Key as indicated by " See page " so and so, 

 at the end of each species ; he will then be able to read a full de- 

 scription of the bird and so remove any doubt as to the correct identi- 

 fication of the species. 



All measurements of birds are given in inches and fractions of an 

 inch. The following diagrams will illustrate how a bird should be 

 measured, and the chart will be useful to the young student of 

 ornithology who may not be familiar with the technical terms used 

 in describing birds. The sexes are indicated by the signs of Mars 

 and Venus : the male, of course, being given that of Mars, S, and 

 the female ? . 



