INTRODUCTION TO BIRD KEY. 
In preparing the present Key, I have striven to make it as simple 
and non-technical as possible, my object being to enable any one 
totally unfamiliar with birds to identify with comparative ease any 
species of the Florida water birds. Let us assume, for example, that 
a young man has killed a duck and wishes to identify it; he turns 
over a few pages of the Key until he finds a figure of a bird which 
resembles his. He then measures his specimen and finds that the 
length of his bird is 16 inches and the length of the wing is 7.40 
inches. He finds that the ducks are divided into groups, and the 
group to which his duck would seem to belong was the one com- 
prising birds having a lobe or flap on the little hind toe, the belly 
white, and which show more or less white or grayish white on the 
head. In this group he finds there are eleven species, but only four 
of them which approximate near enough in size to by any possibility 
be his duck. These are the Ruddy Duck, the two Scaup Ducks, 
and the Ring-necked Duck. Upon reading the description of these 
birds he finds that, as his duck is not chestnut and the tail feathers 
are not stiff and pointed, it cannot be the Ruddy Duck. Of the three 
remaining species two have the speculum white, the third has it gray. 
As his duck has the speculum gray it must, therefore, be a female 
Ring-necked Duck. To be absolutely positive of this he turns over 
to the latter part of the Key as indicated by ‘‘ See page” so and so, 
at the end of each species; he will then be able to read a full de- 
scription of the bird and so remove any doubt as to the correct identi- 
fication of the species. 
All measurements of birds are given in inches and fractions of an 
inch. The following diagrams will illustrate how a bird should be 
measured, and the chart will be useful to the young student of 
ornithology who may not be familiar with the technical terms used 
in describing birds. The sexes are indicated by the signs of Mars 
and Venus: the male, of course, being given that of Mars, ¢, and 
the female @. 
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