LAMELLIROSTRAL, OR PLATE-BILLED 



SWIMMERS 



(Order Anseres) 



MERGANSERS; RIVER AND POND DUCKS; SEA AND 

 BAY DUCKS ; GEESE ; SWANS 



(Family Anatidce) 



Five subfamilies, numbering about two hundred species, 

 constitute this large family of water fowl that in itself forms a 

 well-defined order. They are the mergansers, river ducks, sea 

 ducks, geese, and swans. All these birds have the margins of 

 the beak (rostrum) furnished with lamels, or plates, tooth-like 

 projections, fluted ridges or gutters along its sides ; but the sub- 

 families are so well defined that their peculiarities would best be 

 noted separately. 



Mergansers, or Fishing Ducks 



(Subfamily Mergince) 



Let the young housekeeper avoid any ducks with long, nar- 

 row, rounded, hooked, and saw-toothed bills ; for the shelldrakes, 

 or sawbills, as the mergansers are also called, have rank, unpala- 

 table flesh, owing to their diet of fish, which are pursued and 

 captured under water in the manner practiced by loons, cormo- 

 rants, and other birds low in the evolutionary scale. Mergan- 

 sers live in fresh as well as salt water. 



American Merganser or Goosander. 



Red-breasted Merganser. 



Hooded Merganser. 

 S3 



