THE GREEN-WINGED TEAL. 239 
being less susceptible of cold, and tarrying on the Great 
Lakes till the frosts set in with sufficient severity to pre- 
vent its frequenting its favorite haunts with pleasure, or 
obtaining its food with facility. It is rarely or never 
seen in the Middle States during the summer, but is 
tolerably abundant during the autumn on all the marshy 
lakes and pools, and along the shores of all the reedy 
rivers from the Great Lakes downward to the sea-board, 
though, like the last named species, it is purely a fresh- 
water duck, never frequenting the sea-shores or salt-bays, 
finding no food thereon with which to gratify its delicate 
and fastidious palate, which, eschewing fish, the larve 
of insects, and the lesser crustacw, relishes only the 
seeds of the various water plants and grasses, the tender 
leaves of some vegetables, and more especially the grain 
of the wild rice, Zizania panicula effusa, which is its 
favorite article of subsistence, and one to which may be 
ascribed the excellence of every bird of air or water 
which feeds on it, from the Rice-Bird and the Rail, to 
the Teal, the Canvass-Back, and even the large Thick- 
Billed Fudigula, closely allied to the Scoter, the Velvet 
Duck, and other uneatable sea-fowl of Lake Huron, 
which are scarcely, if at all, inferior to the Red-Heads 
of Chesapeake Bay, the Gunpowder, or the Potomac. 
On the Susquehanna and the Delaware, both these 
beautiful little ducks were in past years excessively 
abundant, so that a good gunner, paddling one. of the 
sharp, swift skiffs peculiar to those waters, was certain 
