THE GJKEEN-WINGED TEAL. 245 



a couple of these beautiful birds, right and left, while 

 woodcock shooting, in Orange County, New York, with 

 No. 8 shot. They sprang quite unexpectedly from behind 

 a willow bush, on the "Wawayanda creek, and I dropped 

 them both quite dead_, somewhat to my own astonish- 

 ment, and to the utter astounding of Fat Tom, who 

 witnessed it, into the middle of the stream, respectively 

 at twenty and twenty-five yards distance. Until I recov- 

 ered them I supposed that they were young wood ducks, 

 but 011 examination they proved to be young green- 

 winged teal, of that season, in their immature plumage. 

 This must have been in the last week of July or the first 

 of August it was many years since, and as at that time 

 I kept no shooting diary, I unfortunately am unable to 

 verify the exact date. The birds must, I conclude, have 

 been bred in that vicinity, by what means I cannot con- 

 jecture, unless that the parent birds might have been 

 wounded in the spring, and disabled from completing 

 their northern migration, and that this, as is sometimes 

 the case w r ith the minor birds of passage, might have 

 superinduced their breeding in that, for them, far south- 

 ern region. In corroboration of this I may add that, in 

 the spring of 1846, a couple of these birds haunted a 

 small reedy island in front of my house, 'on the Passaic, 

 to so late a day in summer the 29th, if I do not err, of 

 May that I sedulously avoided disturbing them, in the 

 hope that they -would breed there. This I yet think 

 would have been the case but for the constant disturb- 



