CLUCKING TEAL. Ill 



tenths; middle toe and claw one inch and three tenths; beak from forehead 

 one inch and a half; from rictus one inch and four fifths; breadth of 

 beak below three fifths of an inch. Female. — Length fifteen inches; carpus 

 to tip seven inches; tarsus one inch and one tenth; middle toe and claw 

 one inch and three fifths; beak from forehead one inch and three tenths, 

 from rictus one inch and a half; breadth of beak below half an inch. 



This beautiful Teal must not be confounded with the Bimaculated 

 Duck of the English authors. Pennant, it is true, identified his bird 

 of that name witli the Anas glocitans of Pallas, ("British. Zoology," 

 vol. ii, p. 603, pi. 100, fig. 2, ed. 1776.) Yarrell, ("British Birds," 

 first and second edition, vol. iii, p. 260,) figures a Duck as the 

 Bimaculated Duck of Pennant, and describes it as identical with 

 Anas glocitans. This bird was, however, a hybrid between the 

 Pintail and the Wigeon, and in the last edition of Yarrell's work has 

 been very properly withdrawn. In the fourteenth volume of the 

 "Linnean Transactions," Mr. Vigors describes a male and female 

 Teal, taken in a decoy at Maldon, in Essex, as the true Anas glocitans, 

 and the Bimaculated Duck of Pennant. But he makes this identifi- 

 cation on the authority of Pennant, expressing himself a doubt 

 whether they are the same, as his specimen difiered from the figure 

 in the "Acta Stockholmiensia," and at the same time admitting that 

 Pennant's figure was a very good representation of his male bird, 

 though they differed in the numbers of tail feathers, that of Pennant 

 having only twelve, while Mr. Vigors' specimens had both sixteen. 

 Nothing has ever been known about Pennant's specimen, said to have 

 been "taken in a decoy in 1771, and communicated to me by — 

 Poore, Esq." 



By comparing, however, Penuaat's fi.gure with that of the true 

 Anas glocitans of Pallas, which, through the kindness of Mr. 

 Tristram, I have the opportunity of figuring, it will be at once 

 perceived that the birds are totally different, and consequently that 

 neither the figure of Pennant nor Yarrell, nor the description of 

 Vigors in the "Linnean Transactions," refer to the true Anas glocitans, 

 of whose capture in England we have no proof whatever. This 

 will not now admit of the slightest doubt. I have therefore thought 

 it better to drop the word Bimaculated altogether, as applied to the 

 Anas glocitatis, and to translate the specific word glocitans into the 

 perhaps less euphonious, but more expressive name of "Clucking," 

 which was applied to it owing to the note being similar to the "cluck" 

 of a hen. 



The "Clucking Teal" is an inhabitant of the cold and inhospitable 



