124 



WILD ANIMALS OP GLACIER NATIONAL PARK. 



Buffle-head. 



Buffle-iiead: Cliar'itonvtta alheolo. — ]Mr. Bryant once found a 

 nest in a stump on a flat of Dutch Creek, which he identified from 

 the egi>s as that of a bnffle-head, but tlie bird was not seen and no 

 nests wei'c found in the marsh bordering the hike. Mr. Stevenson 

 saj-s the butlle-head is common in the park in spring and late fall, but 



he has never seen either nest 

 or joung. His father now 

 suspects that it breeds 

 near Sherburne Lake. The 

 mounted bird to be seen at 

 Lewis's came from the Mid- 

 dle Fork of the Flathead. 

 On the St. Marjr Lakes, Dr. 

 Grinnell found it, like the 

 Barrow golden-eye, among 

 the last to leave. 



On April 21, 1918, Mr. 

 Bailey found many flocks of buffle-heads on Lake McDonald, usually 

 with large flocks or in the great assemblies of mixed species of ducks. 

 At a distance, he says, they looked like pure white balls— snowballs — 

 floating on the water. 



Western Harlequin Duck : Histrionicus Mstrionlcus faclfcus. — 

 The western form of the little harlequin, whose distribution is given 

 as northwestern America and Siberia, 

 and which spends its summers in rapid 

 mountain streams, is one of the most 

 notable birds found in Glacier Park. 

 Everj'thing about it is distinctive. The 

 plumage of the drake is bizarre enough 

 to merit the name harlequin, with its 

 gray and rich brown body colors strik- 

 ingly slashed with white, and while the 

 duck, according to the accepted custom in 

 ornithological circles, is as dull colored 

 and inconspicuous as her lord is hand- 

 some and striking, she still has unusual 

 face marks — two white spots on each side 

 of the head that serve to identify her 

 across a lake. 



Still more distinctive are the harlequin's habits, for, like the Avater 

 ouzel, an habitue of foaming mountain streams, it rides their rapids 

 with the abandon of enjoyment. On- the rapids connecting the two 

 St. Mary Lakes, in the spring of 1895, Mr. Bailey found eight or 

 ten " diving, bobbing on the rough surface, drifting or darting- 

 down over the rapids, and then- gathering in a bunch below to fly 



From Handbook of Wfatirn Bir 

 Fuprti's. 



Flo.,-52.- 



-Wosteni harlequin 

 duck. 



