THE GADWALL. 497 



distinct; head and neck brownish-yellow, spotted with dusky; the belly with a 

 decided chestnut tinye; iris reddish-orange. 



Length, twenty inches; wing, nine and fifty one-hundredths; tarsus, one aui 

 thirty-eight one-hundredths ; commissure, three and two one-hundredths inches. 



The Shoveller is a rare species on the coast of New Eng- 

 land ; but two or three are taken in a season, and it is 

 rarely that one is found here in the mature plumage. It 

 is as often found in fresh-water ponds and streams as in the 

 creeks and bays near the shore. It breeds in the most 

 northern portions of the eastern coast ; but, according to 

 Mr. Audubon, it passes the season of incubation "from 

 Texas westward to the Columbia River, thence to the fur 

 countries." Says Nuttall, " Soon after March, according 

 to Baillou, they disperse through the fens in France to 

 breed, and select the same places with the Summer Teal ; 

 choosing with them large tufts of rushes, making a nest of 

 withered grass in the most boggy and difficult places 

 of access, near waters. The eggs are twelve to fourteen, 

 of a very pale greenish-yellow : the female sits twenty- 

 four or twenty -five days." 



The Spoonbill feeds, like the other fresh-water ducks, on 

 various aquatic insects and tadpoles ; but, unlike the Teals, 

 eats but few seeds of aquatic plants. A specimen that I 

 examined, killed in Plymouth County, Mass., had its stom- 

 ach filled with small pieces of some aquatic roots, and one 

 or two tadpoles : there were also fragments of small crusta- 

 ceans, but so small that it was impossible to identify them. 



OHAULELASMUS, Gray. 



Chaulelasmus, G. R. Gray (1838). (Type Anas strepera, L.) 

 Bill as long as the head ; the lower edge about as long as the outer toe, and 

 longer than the tarsus; the lamellae distinctly visible below the edge of the bill. 



CHAULELASMUS STREPEEUS. — GVaj/. 



The Gadwall; Gray Duck. 



Anat strepera, Linnasus, Wilson, and others. 



32 



