( 27) 
PIED DUCK. 
FULIGULA LABRADORA, GMEL. 
PLATE CCCXXXII. Mate anp Fematre. 
A.ttTHouGH no birds of this species occurred to me when I was in 
Labrador, my son, Joun Woopuouse, and the young friends who ac- 
companied him on the 28th of July 1833 to Blane Sablon, found, placed 
on the top of the low tangled fir-bushes, several deserted nests, which 
from the report of the English clerk of the fishing establishment there, 
we learned to belong to the Pied Duck. ‘They had much the appear- 
ance of those of the Eider Duck, being very large, formed externally 
of fir twigs, internally of dried grass, and lined with down. It would thus 
seem that the Pied Duck breeds earlier than most of its tribe. It is sur- 
prising that this species is not mentioned by Dr RicHarpson in the 
Fauna Boreali-Americana, as it is a very hardy bird, and is met with 
along the coasts of Nova Scotia, Maine, and Massachusetts, during the 
most severe cold of winter. My friend Professor MacCuttocn of Pictou 
has procured several in his immediate neighbourhood ; and the Honour- 
able DanieL Wessrexr of Boston sent me a fine pair killed by himself, 
on the Vineyard Islands, on the coast of Massachusetts, from which I 
made the drawing for the plate before you. ‘The female has not, I be- 
lieve, been hitherto figured ; yet the one represented was not an old bird. 
The range of this species along our shores does not extend farther 
southward than Chesapeake Bay, where I have seen some near the in- 
flux of the St James River. I have also met with several in the Balti- 
more market. Along the coast of New Jersey and Long Island it oc- 
curs in greater or less number every year. It also at times enters the 
Delaware River in Pennsylvania, and ascends that stream at least as 
far as Philadelphia. A bird-stuffer whom I knew at Camden had 
many fine specimens, all of which he had procured by baiting fish- 
hooks with the common mussel, on a ‘ trot-line” sunk a few feet be- 
neath the surface, but on which he never found one alive, on account 
of the manner in which these Ducks dive and flounder when securely 
hooked. All the specimens which I saw with this person, male and 
female, were in perfect plumage ; and I have not enjoyed opportuni- 
ties of seeing the changes which this species undergoes. 
