ie « 
BIRDS OF MINNESOTA. 45 
17th of March. Their distribution for breeding, becomes con- 
siderably restricted, but varies in the choice of localities in suc- 
cessive years. In the one first alluded to their nests were found 
in several places in Hennepin county, but in the next I could 
find or hear of none. In later years I found them breeding 
along the Minnesota bottoms and in the marshes along Min- 
nehaha creek, which constitutes the outlet of Lake Minne- 
tonka. 
Mr. Washburn found them ‘‘rather common, and breeding 
at Otter Tail and Mille Lacs,” in 1885. The nest is formed of 
weeds, sedges and grasses, lined with considerable down. 
Hight to ten eggs are usually laid, of a dingy creamy-white 
color. It is almost a strictly vegetable feeder, wandering 
some considerable distance from the water in search of ber- 
ries, nuts, wild rice, etc. 
SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. 
Head, and neck all around, chestnut; chin black; forehead 
dusky; region round the eye continued along the side of the 
head as a broad stripe, rich green, passing into a bluish-black 
patch across the nape; under parts white, the feathers of the 
jugulum with rounded black spots; lower portion of neck all 
around, sides of breast and body, long feathers of flanks and 
scapulars, beautifully and finely banded closely with black 
and grayish-white; outer webs of some scapulars, and of outer 
secondaries black, the latter tipped with white; speculum 
broad and rich green; wing coverts plain grayish-brown, the 
greater coverts tipped with buff; a white crescent in front of 
the bend of the wing; crissum black, with a triangular patch 
of buffy white on each side; lower portion of the green stripe . 
on each side of the head blackish, with a dull edge of whitish 
below; iris brown. Sometimes the under parts are strongly 
tinged with ferruginous brown. 
Length, 14; wing, 7.40; tarsus, 1.15; commissure, 1.68. 
Habitat, North America generally. 
ANAS DISUORS L. (140.) 
BLUE-WINGED TEAL. 
No other species of the Ducks is so cautious upon its arrival 
as the Blue-winged Teal, a trait by which the old hunter deter- 
mines its identity at once. In parties of eight to ten or a dozen, 
they will circle around, descending again and again only to 
rise again and go further up, or lower down the stream, to 
repeat the same demonstrations of indecision, many times over, 
and just as unexpectedly they suddenly drop out of sight 
