HARLEQUIN DUCK. 365 



and is very vigilant. It was never seen associating with 

 any other Duck. Coloured figures of both sexes will be 

 found in Edwards' 1 Gleanings in Natural History, and 

 these are among the earliest representations of this species. 

 Plate 99 represents an adult male, brought from New- 

 foundland, where, on account of its variegated plumage, 

 it is called the Painted Duck. Plate 157 is a represen- 

 tation of a female brought from Hudson"^ Bay, where the 

 male, from his fine appearance, is called the Lord Duck. 



This species is well known to American ornithologists. 

 Mr. Audubon says, " On the 31st of May, 1833, I found 

 them breeding on White Head Island, and other much 

 smaller places of a similar nature, in the same part of the 

 Bay of Fundy. There they place their nests under the 

 bushes, or amid the grass, at the distance of twenty or 

 thirty yards from the water. Farther north, in New- 

 foundland and Labrador, for example, they remove from 

 the sea, and betake themselves to small lakes a mile or so 

 in the interior, on the margins of which they form their 

 nests beneath the bushes, next to the water. The nest 

 is composed of dry plants of various kinds, arranged in a 

 circular manner to the height of two or three inches, and 

 lined with finer grasses. The eggs are five or six, rarely 

 more, measure two inches and one sixteenth, by one inch 

 and nine-sixteenths, and are of a plain greenish-yellow 

 colour. After the eggs are laid, the female plucks the 

 down from the lower parts of her body, and places it 

 beneath and around them, in the same manner as the 

 Eider Duck and other species of this tribe. The male 

 leaves her to perform the arduous, but, no doubt, to her 

 pleasant, task of hatching and rearing the brood, and, 

 joining his idle companions, returns to the sea-shore, where 

 he moults in July and August." 



