186 ANAS CLYPEATA. 



most inaccessible part of the slaky marsh, and lays ten 

 or twelve pale rust coloured egL rs ; the young, as soon 

 as hatched, are conducted to th<- water by the parent 

 birds. They are said to be at tirst very shapeless and 

 ugly, for the bill is then as broad as the body, and seems 

 too great a weight for the little bird to carry. Their 

 plumage does not acquire its full colours until after the 

 second moult. 



The blue-winged shoveller is twenty inches long, 

 and two feet six inches in extent; the bill is brownish 

 black, three inches in length, greatly widened near the 

 extremity, closely pectinated on the sides, and furnished 

 with a nail on the tip of each mandible ; irides, bright 

 orange; tongue, large and fleshy ; the inside of the upper 

 and outside of the lower mandible are grooved, so as to 

 receive distinctly the long separated reedlike teeth; 

 there is also a gibbosity in the two mandibles, which 

 do not meet at the sides, and this vacuity is occupied 

 by the sifters just mentioned ; head and upper half of 

 the neck, glossy, changeable green ; rest of the neck and 

 breast, white, passing round and nearly meeting above; 

 whole belly, dark reddish chestnut; flanks, a brownish 

 yellow, penciled transversely with black, between which 

 and the vent, which is black, is a band of white ; back, 

 blackish brown ; exterior edges of the scapulars, white ; 

 lesser wing-coverts, and some of the tertials, a fine light 

 sky blue ; beauty spot on the wing, a changeable 

 resplendent bronze green, bordered above by a band of 

 white, and below with another of velvety black ; rest 

 of the wing, dusky, some of the tertials streaked down 

 their middles witli white ; tail, dusky, pointed, broadly 

 edged with white ; legs and feet, reddish orange, hind 

 toe not finned. 



With the above another was shot, which differed in 

 having the breast spotted with dusky, and the bark 

 with white ; the green plumage of the head intermixed 

 with gray, and the belly with circular touches of white, 

 evidently a young male in its imperfect plumage. 



The female has the crown of a dusky brown ; rest of 

 the head and neck, yellowish white, thickly spotted with 



