394 



ALBCTORIDES. 



Hab. The whole of North America, Middle America, and West Indies; north to Greenland 

 and Alaska, south to Veragua and Trinidad. 



Sp. Char. Adult : General color uniform slate-color or slaty plumbeous, the head and neck 

 and anterior cential portion of the crissum black ; lateral and posterior portions of the crissum, 

 edge of wing, and tips of secondaries white. (In winter, the belly sufl'used with w-hitish.) BiU 

 milk-white, more bluish terminally, each mandible with a spot of dark brown near the end, bor- 

 dered anteriorly with a more or less distinct bar of reddish chestnut ; frontal .shield dark chestnut- 

 or liver-brown, the culraen just in front of this tinged with greenish yellow ; iris bright crimson ; 

 legs bright yellowish green, the tibiae tinged behind and above with orange-red ; toes light bluish 



gray, tinged with yellowish green on scutelUe of basal phalanges. ^ Young: Similar, but lower 

 parts more gray, and much suffused with whitish, especially on the throat and belly ; bill dull 

 flesh-color, tinged with olive-greenish, the frontal shield rudimentary ; iris brown. Doimiy young: 

 Prevailing color blackish plumbeous ; head, neck, and upper parts relieved by numerous crisp, 

 elongated, somewhat filamentous bristles, these sparse, light orange-buff and white, on the upper 

 parts, but dense and deep salmon-orange on the head and neck, where the dark plumbeous down 

 is almost or quite concealed ; these colored filaments entirely alisent from the whole pileum. which 

 is mostly liald toward the occiput, elsewhere covered with closely appressed black bristles ; lores 

 densely covered with short, stamen-like, orange-red papilla;. Bill orange-red, the tip of the max- 

 illa black ; feet dusky (in skin). 



Total length, about 14 inches; wing, 7.25-7.60 ; culmen (to commencement of frontal shield), 

 1.2.5-1.50; tarsus, 2.00-2.20 ; middle toe, 2,4.'j-2.65. 



The Common Coot of the North American fauna has a very widely extended 

 distribution. It is found present and breeding in a large part of Northern South 

 America, in Jamaica, C!uba, and other West India Islands, in many of the Southern 

 States, in the Nortlnvestern States, in tlie interior between the Missouri and the 

 Western Mountains, on the Pacific coast, and on the Saskatchewan and tlie Mackenzie 

 as far to the north as the 55th parallel, and even farther. It is not so common on 

 the Atlantic coast, and is met with chiefiy, or wdioUy, in its migrations — usually in 

 September. It is very abundant in ilexico in the winter. Two instances are cited 

 by Reinhardt of its having been taken in Greenland : one was in 1854, by Mr. Olric, 

 the governor of North Greenland, in the harbor of Christianshaab ; the other in the 

 same year, by Holbtill, at Godthaab. It is an occasional visitant of Bermuda. Eich- 

 ardson, who met with it in the Fur Country, states that its habits exactly resemble 

 those of the closely allied Eurojjean Coot. The small grassy lakes which skirt the 

 Saskatchewan Plains are much frequented by this species. It was not met with near 



1 Fresh colors of an adult male killed at Wheatland, Ind., April 15, 1881. 



