Duck-sbooting 173 



Eggs — Six to eight in number, olive-gray in color, and measure 

 2.77 by 1.80 inches. 



Habitat — The northern part of the northern hemisphere. In 

 North America, breeds from Labrador, rarely Quebec, along 

 the coast north to northern Greenland and the Arctic coasts 

 at Franklin Bay and Point Barrow. Winters in southern Green- 

 land and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, south on the Atlantic 

 Coast, regularly to New York, and rarely to Georgia ; in the 

 interior rarely to western New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wiscon- 

 sin, Minnesota, Illinois, Ontario, and Alberta ; on the Aleutian 

 Islands, and recorded once from California. Occurs also in the 

 interior of Alaska, and in Hudson Bay. 



Of all the eiders, the most beautiful. The 

 plumage of the male king eider, with his lavender 

 hood and delicate sea-green face, is unequalled, 

 while the black V on his throat is the mark of 

 an aristocrat. This variety keeps farther north 

 than the commoner members of the family, and 

 only in severe winters straggles within our reach. 

 The most northern shores of both coasts are 

 their resorts. In Alaska, St. Michael seems to 

 be the southern limit. On the Atlantic the Gulf 

 of St. Lawrence. In summer, Greenland and 

 the shores of the Arctic Sea are the haunts. 

 Marshes adjacent to the shore are the sites 

 selected to breed in. The nest is a mere de- 

 pression on the ground, composed of grass and 

 down. An adult male of this species in the 

 writer's collection, killed in August off the north 

 coast of Hudson Bay, has the brown feathers 

 still in the head and breast, and is evidently just 



