SCAUP DUCK. 45 



Near Islands. It breeds accidentally or casually at Mount Vernon, 

 Va., 1881; Magdalen Islands, Gulf of St. Lawrence; Toronto, Ontario; 

 St. Clair Flats, Michigan; Clear Lake, Iowa; Minneapolis and Fergus 

 Falls, Minn. ; and Great Whale River, James Bay. 



The species also breeds in the arctic regions of the Old World, and 

 winters south to southern Europe and central Asia. 



Winter range. — This is one of the principal game birds of the 

 Atlantic coast region from Massachusetts to Chesapeake Bay, and it 

 is probably more common here during the winter than in any other 

 part of its range. The winter range on the Atlantic coast of this and 

 the next species is complementary. The present species is common 

 from Chesapeake Bay northward, while most of the lesser scaups 

 winter south of that district and are most common from North Caro- 

 lina to Florida. A small proportion of the flocks of the greater scaup 

 pass south to the Carolinas and a few continue on to Florida and the 

 Bahamas. The records for the West Indies seem to belong to the 

 lesser scaup and the same is probably true of the few records for 

 Mexico and Central America. 



The species winters regularly on the New Jersey coast and usually 

 on Long Island; its stay in Massachusetts is governed by winter con- 

 ditions, and during mild winters like those of 1891-92, 1893-94, and 

 1903-4, it is quite common along the southeastern coast. Occasionally 

 some scaups winter even on the coast of Maine. It occurs throughout 

 the Mississippi Valley in winter north to southern Wisconsin and 

 Toronto, Ontario, though it is hardly more than a straggler in winter 

 north of the Ohio River. 



The greater scaup ranges nearly to the southwestern boundary of 

 the United States in southern Texas, southern New Mexico, central 

 Arizona, and to San Diego, Cal. A few winter in southern Colorado, 

 southern Utah, and more commonly in Nevada, and on the Pacific coast 

 north to the Aleutian Islands. 



Spring migration. — Few birds have a more pronounced northwest 

 and southeast migration than the greater scaup duck. Its center of 

 abundance in winter is on the Atlantic coast between the meridians of 

 74° and 76° longitude, but almost all of these Atlantic coast birds 

 breed west of the meridian of 95° longitude, and their route in spring 

 is along the general direction of the chain of lakes that stretches 

 almost due northwestward from Lake Erie to Great Slave Lake. The 

 two routes of migration — south along the Mississippi River and south- 

 west to the New England coast — are revealed still more clearly in the 

 fall, when this species scarcely occurs in Indiana, though common 

 both to the east and west of that State. In spring some of the flocks 

 move north along the coast, slightly beyond their winter home, to 

 eastern Massachusetts, but so large a proportion of them turn inland 

 fhat the species is, rare to the northeastward of this State, straggling 



