THE HOODED MERGANSER. 629 



LOPHODYTES, Reichart. 



Lophodytes, Reichart, Syst. Av. (1852). 



Bill shorter than the head, black ; serrations compressed, low, short, inserted 

 obliquely on the edge of bill ; the point truncated, and not recurved nor acute ; tail 

 more than half the wings; tarsi short, half the feet; head with a much compressed 

 vertical, circular, and erect crest. 



But a single species of this genus is known to naturalists. 



LOPHODYTES CUCUXLATUS. — Reichart. 

 The Hooded Merganser. 



Mei'gus cucullatus, Linnaeus. Syst, Nat., I. (1766) 207. "VVils. Am. Orn., VIII. 

 79. Nutt. Man., II. 465. Aud. Orn. Biog., III. (1835) 246; V. 619. lb., Birds 

 Am., VI. (1843) 402. 



Lophodytes cucullatus, Reichart. Syst. Av. (1852). 



Description. 



Head with an elongated, compressed, semicircular crest ; anterior extremity of 

 nostril reaching not quite as far as the middle of commissure ; frontal feathers ex- 

 tending nearly as far as half the distance from lateral feathers to nostril ; the latter 

 much beyond the feathers on side of lower mandible ; bill shorter than head. 



Male. — Bill black; head, neck, and back, black; under parts and centre of 

 crest white ; sides chestnut-brown, barred with black ; white anterior to the wing, 

 crossed by two black crescents; lesser coverts gray; white speculum with a basal 

 and median black bar; black tertials streaked centrally with white; iris yellow. 



Female. — With a shorter and more pointed crest; the head and neck reddish 

 brown ; the back without pure-black ; the sides without transverse bars ; the white 

 of wings less extended. 



Length, seventeen and fifty one-hundredths inches ; wing, seven and ninety one- 

 hundredths ; tarsus, one and twenty one-hundredths ; commissure, one and ninetv 

 eight one-hundredths inches. 



Sab. — Whole of North America. 



This beautiful bird is less common than either of the 

 other Mergansers on our coast and in our bays and inlets, 

 in autumn, winter, and early spring. In the summer, it 

 resides in the interior, where it breeds by the lakes and 

 other bodies of fresh water; building its nest in holes in 

 high dead trees, or on the tops of stubs, thirty or forty feet 

 from the ground, exactly like the Sheldrake. The eggs are 

 from nine to twelve or fourteen in number, usually about 

 ten. They are of a clear-white color, although their surface 

 is, in some specimens, stained by the moisture from the. 



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