112 - ANATID^. 



In Colonel Hawker's ' Instructions to Young Sportsmen ' an 

 excellent account of wigeon, and the methods of shooting them, is 

 given. 



THE AMERICAN WIGEON. 



Anas Americana, Gmel. 



Is, on the following testimony, believed to have been 



obtained. 



As recorded by me in the ' Annals of Natural History' for 1845 

 (vol. XV. p, 310) : — Henry Bell, an intelhgent man of middle age, 

 who since he could carry a gun has been a vvigeon-shooter in 

 Belfast Bay, and for the last eight or nine winters has given up 

 his whole time to the pui'suit, by which he earned his livelihood, 

 visited Strangford Lougli "professionally'' towards the end of 

 February 1844, with his punt and swivel-gun. Hearing on a 

 dark night the call of wigeon,^ he fired towards the place whence 

 the sound proceeded, and picked up a single bird, which differed 

 in plumage from any he had ever seen. Its form at once marked 

 this bird to his eye as a wigeon of some kind, but in a state of 

 plumage unlike that of the common species of either sex at any 

 age : of this he was a good judge, from many hundreds having 

 passed through his hands, and from his being very observant of 

 the species of birds and the changes of plumage which they 

 undergo. He described it as a wigeon in the plumage of a teal. 

 The large markings on the lower part of the sides of the neck and 

 on the breast, instead of being roundish as in the teal, were some- 

 what of a semicircular form, and varied in size from " one half to 

 nearly the whole size of a man's finger-nail." On the top of the 

 head it was wliitish like the old male wigeon, but of a purer 

 colour, and, like it, had the white marking on the wing, both 



* According to Wilson's description of the call of the American wigeon, it is very 

 like that of the European species. 



