98 GAME BIRDS, WILD-FOWL AND SHORE BIRDS. 



Blue-winged Teal are still numerous in the west, where 

 most of them now breed, and the species is not, like the 

 Wood Duck, in any immediate danger of extinction; but 

 most of those which once bred in the northeast, or migrated 

 through this region, have been exterminated, and we are now 

 probably dependent mainly on the overflow from the great 

 northwest for such flights of Teal as come to us in good 

 breeding years. The Blue-winged Teal is such a compara- 

 tively tame and unsuspicious bird that it now needs special 

 protection in the east. Elliot says that it begins to leave 

 its southern feeding grounds in February, and that, like all 

 Ducks at this season, it is poor in flesh and should never 

 be shot. This Duck flies with terrific speed. In the fall 

 the flocks frequent the wild rice marshes along the borders 

 of rivers. When coming in to alight they seem very sus- 

 picious. They sweep up and down the river, not far above 

 the water, as if reconnoitering, sometimes quacking as if in 

 alarm, turning swiftly in concert, rolling from side to side, 

 first showing the blue of their wings and then their backs. 

 The flocks are seldom seen on the large, deep lakes, but fre- 

 quent small ponds, marshes and shallow, sluggish streams. 

 They like to alight in small ponds or sloughs among the wild 

 rice, where they feed greedily on the seed that hangs down or 

 that which has fallen off in the mud. Now they become 

 very fat and are excellent eating, in great contrast to their 

 condition in the spring. This Teal rests lightly upon the 

 water, and the male in spring plumage is one of the hand- 

 somest of the Duck tribe. 



Its food in the ponds includes much vegetable matter, 

 seeds, grasses, pondweeds, etc. It also at times destroys 

 snails, tadpoles and many insects. 



Note. — The Cinnamon Teal {Querquedula ajanoptera) might be included 

 in a list of the birds of Massachusetts and adjacent States as a single speci- 

 men was taken on the shore of Seneca Lake, Yates County, N. Y., about the 

 middle of April, 1886, and is now in the collection of James Flahive, Penn 

 Yan, N. Y. (Eaton); but as this is a neotropical bird, which occurs in the 

 southwestern United States and west of the Rocky Mountains, is merely 

 accidental in the east and is not recorded from Massachusetts, it is 

 omitted from the present list. 



