American Eider 61 
The female is sooty-brown above, paler and mottled with white 
below and has a white patch on the ear-coverts and sides of the face 
at the base of the bill; wing 7-5. The young male at first resembles 
the female and gradually acquires the male characteristic, taking from 
two to three years to do so. 
Distribution.—Breeding from Newfoundland north to Greenland 
and Iceland, and to Alaska and Siberia, also in, Rocky Mountains 
south to Colorado and central California ; in winter south of its breeding 
range to Long Island, the Great Lakes and on the Pacific coast from 
Monterey to Japan. 
The Harlequin is a rare resident in Colorado, apparently breeding 
in the mountains from 7,000 to about 10,000 feet, and wintering at 
lower elevations, but very few observations have been made and we 
know very little about its movements or its habits. 
Drew first reported it from San Juan co. where he believed it nested 
at high elevations; Morrison followed Drew, but gave no definite 
evidence about its breeding ; he stated, however, that it was common 
on the river in winter below Fort Lewis, with Barrow’s Golden-eye. 
The only other notice of this duck in Colorado is that of Carter, who 
found it breeding on the Blue River, below Breckenridge, at an altitude 
of 9,200 feet. 
Genus SOMATERIA. 
Ducks of large size, with the bill varying in shape but swollen at the 
base ; feathers of the head running forwards on to the bill, and forming 
various frontal and lateral prolongations as far as the nostrils ; plumage 
chiefly black and white with green about the head. 
Four species of Arctic or Subarctic range are found in North America 
but only one hitherto is known to wander to Colorado, 
American Eider. Somaieria dresseri, 
A.O.U. Checklist no 160—Colorado Records—Cooke 97, pp. 156, 
224; 06, p. 57. 
Description.—_Male—Top of the head, rump, tail-coverts and under- 
parts from the breast black ; occiput washed with sea-green ; rest of 
the plumage, including the curly inner secondaries and most of the 
wing-coverts white ; bare frontal spaces on either side at the base of 
the bill, long, broad, club-shaped and divergent; bill yellowish. 
Length 2-40; wing 11-0; tail 4-0; culmen 2-0; tarsus 1-75. 
The female is everywhere varied chiefly in bars with black, chestnut 
and yellowish-brown, becoming greyish with dusky mottling below. 
Distribution.—Breeding from the coast of Maine north to Hudson 
Bay ; wintering from Newfoundland to New Jersey and occasionally 
