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ANAS CAROLINENSIS 
species, hence their chance of attaining to a green old age, especially when pinioned, 
is very small. They “go bad” in the feet in our long, cold New England winters and 
so are placed on the pond in spring in poor condition for mating. 
Dealers dislike to handle Teal as the mortality is always considerable and the 
birds do not ship very well. They can often be obtained for $6.00 to $12.00 a 
pair, perhaps less for fresh-trapped specimens. I doubt if our Teal has ever been 
introduced into European collections. It is too similar to its European cousin to 
make the effort worth while. 
Dr. ^Yarren, mentioned above, has written me about his pets and his success in 
getting them to nest in such close quarters is so remarkable that I am tempted to 
quote him rather fully. His yard was about 48 feet square and contained a cement 
pool eleven by seven feet from which the water was allowed to run out of the tank 
into a small ditch where the Teal were fed. One female nested four out of the six 
years that he had her but no eggs went beyond eighteen or twenty days’ incubation. 
One season this female sat for thirty-five days on a set of eggs which later proved to 
contain nearly adult, but dead ducklings. His Teal laid about June 15 but he had 
nests as late as August 1, when larger ducks had interfered with their domestic 
plans. The paired drakes did not moult until their females had begun to sit. Fe- 
males that did not lay, moulted as early as the males, a fact once or twice noted in 
other ducks under natural conditions. During moult he noted that his Teal were 
extremely silent, both males and females. 
As to hardihood. Dr. Warren’s Teal stood a temperature of 18° to 20° below zero, 
Fahrenheit, but they could not walk about on land much at that temperature with- 
out freezing their feet. The food he used was of great variety. It consisted of mixed 
grains, smart-weed and yellow-dock seed, besides lettuce and celery -tops. His birds 
were also very fond of fresh-dug angleworms, particularly during the breeding 
season at which time they preferred all sorts of animal food. They would not eat 
the large “night-crawler” angleworms nor live “pollywogs.” 
Dr. Warren found the male Teal making a rather imperfect nest during the breed- 
ing season, but he says that this nest was never used by the female. The final nest 
was not visited at all by the male and in fact the male could not be driven near it. 
The female took two or three days in its construction. He has also seen the female 
take a cracked egg out of the nest and carry it to water and then drop it in. Although 
the male never visited the nest during incubation and never whistled loudly at this 
time, he would watch very intently for his mate to come off the nest in the evening to 
feed. The same pair always stayed mated until one of them died and the female 
would never mate with more than one drake. If the male died, his mate did not 
breed the next year. The male, however, would attach himself to more than one 
female if he could. (Behavior such as this cannot be considered the rule in the wild, 
as captivity often distorts the sex instincts to a marked degree.) But if there were 
