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ANAS ACUTA 
Biological Survey comprise about all we know of its food in this country. The num- 
ber of stomachs examined was seven hundred and ninety, collected from practically 
all over North America between the months of September and INIarch. For the sake 
of completeness, stomachs of both adults and young taken in the summer months 
should also be studied. A mere summary of the results of this work (Mabbott,1920) 
will suffice to show the general nature of the diet. The vegetable matter is 87.1 %, 
chief among which are pond-weeds (28.04%), the seeds being preferred (whereas 
the Gadwall and the Baldpate prefer the leaves and stems). Among these pond- 
weeds, seeds of widgeon-grass formed an important item. One stomach contained as 
many as 2800 seeds of true pond-weeds, and other stomachs over 1000 seeds each. 
The next most important vegetable food consisted of the seeds of sedges (21.78%), 
most of which were probably gathered from the water after they had fallen. The 
remains of grasses, also largely seeds, comprised 9.6%, smart-weeds 4.7%, and 
various other water plants in lesser amounts. The animal food was only 12.8%, and 
consisted of mollusks (5.8%), crustaceans (3.8%), and insects (2.8%), besides 0.5% 
miscellaneous animal food, including a few small fish, a frog, a few marine worms, 
water-mites, hy droids, corallines (bryozoans), etc. 
A summer food mentioned by several collectors in Alaska and northwestern 
Canada is the horse-tail rush (Equisetum). Audubon states that in his time Pintail, 
as well as other ducks, resorted to the beech woods. Of the Pintail he even says 
that they take tadpoles in spring, leeches in autumn, and that they have been 
found eating dead mice. He considered them great insect catchers and figured the 
bird engaged in snatching insects, a habit also noticed by H. L. Saxby in the Shet- 
land Islands in May. Goss (1891) and others have spoken of their eating acorns, 
but this diet must be very unusual. 
A few young in down from California examined by H. C. Bryant (1914) had eaten 
storksbill (Erodium), other unidentified seeds, and the pupae of some insects. I 
think the tendency of most writers on food habits is to exaggerate the uncommon 
items, that is, the large and easily recognized seeds, fish, frogs, etc. The great 
mass of the everyday food, which is diflficult to analyze, is often scarcely men- 
tioned. 
In western Europe the Pintail feeds much more commonly on coastal flats, where 
it eats Zostera marina and shell-fish of various kinds, so that the flesh becomes at 
times strong and inedible on this account (W. Thompson, 1851; Millais, 1902). In 
Norway, according to Wallengren (1854), they are known to take blueberries. 
Stomachs of specimens shot in Germany contained water-bugs {Dytiscus), and seeds 
of pond-weeds, sedges, water smart-weed, lady’s thumb, dock-leaved smart-weed, 
water pepper, dock, and eel-grass. They are also said to visit the stubble fields at 
times, and Naumann speaks of the seeds of floating manna-grass {Glyceria fluitans) 
as the favorite food in autumn. 
