BIRDS OF THE CAMBRIDGE REGION. 



107 



ton, by Mr. Everett S. Chapman, and that another brood was seen in the same 

 place during the summer of 1902. 



22. Mareca americana (Gmel.). 

 Baldpate. American Widgeon. 



Transient visitor in autumn, formerly not uncommon, rarely seen during recent years. 



Dr. Samuel Cabot once told me that when he was at Harvard College 

 (i 832-1 836) he used to kill American Widgeon regularly and in some num- 

 bers, in autumn, finding them either in Fresh Pond or along the then retired 

 reaches of Alewife Brook between the outlet of this pond and the road (now 

 Massachusetts Avenue) leading from Harvard Square to Menotomy (now 

 Arlington). They must have nearly or quite ceased to frequent these localities 

 before my shooting experience began, for I have never met with the species 

 anywhere in the region about Cambridge. Nor can I learn of any recent 

 instances of its occurrence there other than the following, for which I am 

 indebted to Mr. O. A. Lothrop : — 



On September 19, 1899, Mr. Alton H. Hathaway killed a female Baldpate 

 at Pout Pond, over which, in company with two other birds of similar appear- 

 ance, it was circling in the evening twilight. At this same pond, on the follow- 

 ing evening, Mr. Lothrop saw a single Duck which he took to be a Baldpate, 

 and on the evening of the 27th he shot one which proved to be a female of that 

 species. It is not improbable that the bird seen on each of these latter two 

 occasions was one and the same, and it may also have been one of the two 

 Ducks which escaped Mr. Hathaway's gun on the evening of the 19th. Both 

 of the specimens which were taken were mounted by Mr. Lothrop, who has 

 since given me the one that he killed on the 27th. 



It is difficult to understand why the American Widgeon has been noted so 

 seldom of late in the Cambridge Region, for within recent years it has occurred 

 rather commonly — although apparently somewhat irregularly — at other locali- 

 ties in eastern Massachusetts. In Wenham Lake (Essex County), for exam- 

 ple, eleven birds were killed in 1903 and no less than nineteen in 1904, accord- 

 ing to Dr. Townsend.i 



' C. W. Townsend, Memoirs of the Nuttall Ornithological Club, no. III. Birds of Essex County, 

 Massachusetts, 1905, 52. 



