BIKDS. 427 



winter, are seldom found so well-tasted or so lat as the fowls 

 that continue with us the year round : their flesh is often lean, 

 and still oftener fishy ; which flavour it has probably contracted 

 in the journey, as their food in the lakes of Lapland, from 

 whence they descend, is generally of the insect kind. 



As soon as they arrive among us, they are generally seen fly- 

 ing in flocks to make a survey of those lakes where they intend 

 to take up their residence for the winter. In the choice of these 

 they have two objects in view ; to be near their food, and 

 yet remote from interruption. Their chief end is to choose 



whose nomenclature exhibits some sing-ular displays of fanciful allusion, 

 imafpned that this duck's crest so much resembled the bridal head-dress o( 

 his country-women, that he named it the bride, though the one is high, stiff, 

 fantastic, and out of all reasonable proportion, while the other is free, 

 elegant, and graceful. The beautiful peudcnt crest of the summer.duck 

 arises from a base of glossy golden green, shading oflf into a rich violet brown, 

 dashed with interrupted streaks of snow white. The feathers covering the 

 wings are of the same glossy brown, which melts into black, with rich pur- 

 ple reflections of burnished steel ; while those on the flanks are delicately 

 fringed and striped with black and white. 



It is stated in the notes to Button, by the English translator, that the 

 summer-duck nestles in the holes bored by the woodpeckers ; but this, on 

 considering its size, must appear impossible. That it does, however, make 

 its nest in the holes of trees has been testified by every observer. Wilson 

 informs us that instances have boon known in which the nest was con- 

 structed with a few sticks laid on the fork of the branches, though it is 

 usually in the inside of a hollow tree, and, as it would appear, very near if 

 not upon the ground. " On the 18th of May," continues Wilson, " I visited 

 a tree containing a nest of a summer -duck, on the banks of Tuckahoc river. 

 New Jersey. It was an old grotesque whit/! oak, whose top had been torn 

 off by a storm. It stood on the declivity of the bank, about twenty yards 

 from the watc^r. 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. This tree had been occupied, 

 probably by the same pair, for four successive years, in breeding-time. Tho 

 person who gave me tho information, and whose house was within twenty 

 or thirty yards of the tree, said that ho hiid seen the female, the preceding 

 spring, carry down her young one by one in less than ten minutes. She 

 caught them in her bill by the wing or back of the neck, and landed them 

 nafi'ly at the foot of the tree, whence she afterwards led them to the water 

 Under this same tree, at the time I visited it, a large sloop lay on the stocks 

 nearly finished ; the deck was not more than twelve feet distant from tho 

 nest, yet, notwithstanding the presence and noise of the workmen, the 

 ducks would not abandon their old breeding-pl.ice, but continued to pass out 

 and in as if no person had l)cen near. The mule usually perched On an ad- 

 joining limb, and kept watch while the female was laying, and al^o often 

 while she was sitting. A tamo goose had oI-.osimi a hollow spine at the nmi 

 of the same tree to lay and hatch hor young in." 



