192 



The Goose-like Birds 



The bill is pale blue tipped with black and the iris bright yellow. The Red-head 

 is found throughout the whole of North America, breeding from Maine and 

 California northward and coming south in winter as far as the Bahamas and 

 middle America. It 'frequents bays, lakes, and large rivers, being especially 

 abundant in winter in the Chesapeake Bay, feeding largely on roots and leaves 

 of Vallisneria, or wild celery, as it is called. It then becomes very fat and rivals 

 the celebrated Canvas-back as a table bird, and is not infrequently sold under 

 the name of its near relative, which it closely resembles. Large numbers are 

 shot for market or caught in nets. Several nests of this species were found by 

 Mr. Bent in the Devil's Lake region of North Dakota. They were placed in 

 clumps of reeds and were handsome nests, made of dead weeds, deeply hollowed 

 and lined with broken pieces of weeds mingled with considerable white down; 

 they were usually on masses of dead weeds built from shallow water and held in 

 place by living reeds growing through them. One nest contained twenty-two 

 eggs, but this was an unusual number, twelve or fifteen being the ordinary com- 

 plement. The Red-head seems to be particularly careless about laying its eggs 

 in the nests of other Ducks, Mr. Bent finding three cases of from three to five 

 occurring in nests of the Canvas-back, and scattered eggs were seen in nests of 



the Ruddy Duck and 



others. In color they 

 vary from olive-buff 

 to a light cream-buff, 

 and in size from two 

 and forty-five hun- 

 dredths to one and 

 seventy-two hun- 

 dredths inches. 



The Canvas-back 

 (A . vallisneria) , which 

 as above indicated is 

 often confused with 

 the Red-head, is a 

 larger tird and has 

 the head and neck 

 rufous-brown, the chin 

 and crown blackish, and the bill deeper at base and larger, but otherwise they 

 are similar. This bird is also found generally throughout North America, but 

 nests only in the interior from Minnesota and Dakota northward to the Arctic 

 Circle. Mr. Bent, whom we have quoted several times, found a number of their 

 nests in the Devil's Lake region, North Dakota. One nest containing eight eggs 

 he describes as follows : "It was a large nest built upon a bulky mass of wet dead 

 weeds, measuring eighteen inches by twenty inches in outside diameter, the rim 

 being built up six inches above the water, the inner cavity being about eight 

 inches across by four inches deep. It was lined with smaller pieces of dead 

 reeds and a little gray down. The small patch of reeds was completely sur- 



FIG. 64. Canvas-back Duck, Aythya vallisneria. 



