202 ANAS SPONSA. 



summer. It is familiarly known in every quarter of 

 the United States, from Florida to Lake Ontario, in the 

 neighbourhood of which latter place I have myself met 

 with it in October. It rarely visits the sea shore, or 

 salt marshes, its favourite haunts being the solitary, 

 deep, and muddy creeks, ponds, and mill dams of the 

 interior, making its nest frequently in old hollow trees 

 that overhang tin- water. 



The summer duck is equally well known in Mexico 

 and many of the West India Islands. During the whole 

 of our winters, they are occasionally seen in the States 

 south of the Potowmac. On the 10th of January I met 

 with two on a creek near Petersburgh in Virginia. In 

 the more northern districts, however, they are migratory. 

 In Pennsylvania the female usually begins to lay late 

 in April or early in May. Instances have been known 

 where the nest was constructed of a few sticks laid in 

 a fork of the branches ; usually, however, the inside of 

 a hollow tree is selected for this purpose. On the 18th 

 of May I visited a tree containing the nest of a summer 

 duck, on the banks of Tuckahoe river, New Jersey. 

 It was an old grotesque white oak, whose top had been 

 torn off by a storm. It stood on the declivity of the 

 bank, about twenty yards from the water. In this 

 hollow and broken top, and about six feet down, on the 

 soft decayed wood, lay thirteen eggs, snugly covered 

 with down, doubtless taken from the breast of the bird. 

 These eggs were of an exact oval shape, less than those 

 of a hen, the surface exceedingly tine grained, and of 

 the highest polish and slightly yellowish, greatly resem- 

 bling old polished ivory. The egg measured two inches 

 and an eighth by one inch and a half. On breaking one 

 of them, the young bird was found to be nearly hatched, 

 but dead, as neither of the parents had been observed 

 about the tree during the three or four days preceding, 

 and were conjectured to have been shot. 



This tree had been occupied, probably hy the same 

 pair, for four successive years, in breeding time ; the 

 person who gave me the information, and whose house 

 was within twenty or thirty yards of the tree, said that 



