140 GAME BIRDS, WILD-FOWL AND SHORE BIRDS. 



Field Marks. — In winter plumage head mostly white; ashy or dusky patch 

 on side of head and upper neck, which is conspicuous in old and young. 



Notes. — Those most commonly uttered resemble the words, south south 

 southerly or old south southerly (Elliot). 0-onc-o-onc-ough-egh-ough-egh 

 (Mackay). Owly owly owly (Packard). 



Season. — Common to abundant migrant and winter resident, mainly 

 coastwise; October to May. 



Range. — Northern hemisphere. In North America breeds from islands of 

 Bering Sea, Arctic coast of Alaska, Melville Island, WeUington Chan- 

 nel, Grinnell Land and northern Greenland south to Aleutian Islands, 

 east central Mackenzie, northern Hudson Bay and southeastern Ungava; 

 winters from the Aleutian Islands south regularly to Washington, 

 rarely to San Diego Bay, Cal., and in southern Greenland, and from 

 Gulf of St. Lawrence south regularly to the Great Lakes and North 

 Carolina, and rarely to Colorado, Texas, Louisiana and Florida. 



Female (Winter). 



History. 

 This species is beautiful in plumage and elegant in form, 

 but is pursued mainly for sport as it is no table delicacy. 

 Thousands of these handsome Ducks are shot annually along 

 the New England coast, and the dead and wounded allowed 

 to drift away on the tide or picked up merely to be shown as 

 trophies and afterward left on the wharf or thrown away. 

 Rich says that he has seen twenty boats at a time, each con- 

 taining from two to four shooters, all killing and wounding 

 Old-squaws, and half of them never stopping to pick up even 

 one bird. " It is at the hands of such butchers," he says, 

 " that the myriads of sea-fowl that once lined our coasts have 

 been reduced to the hundredth part of their former numbers." ^ 

 No species, however numerous, could stand forever such deci- 



1 Rich, Walter E.:. Feathered Game of the Northeast, 1907, pp. 360, 381. 



