FULVOUS TREE DUCK 129 



DESCRIPTION 



Adult Male : Top of head rusty brown running into a black stripe on hind neck. Sides of head and 

 lower parts pinkish buff-color, varying to a richer buff-color depending perhaps on age of feathers. 

 A whitish ring streaked with black around neck. Mantle brown. Rest of upper parts black but 

 feathers broadly margined with rusty brown. Primaries black. Flank feathers ornamental, with 

 white centers. Rump buffy white; tail black; under tail-coverts creamy white. 



Bill bluish black; legs bright slaty blue; iris brown. 



Wing 204-226 mm.; bill 42-49.5; tarsus 49-61. 



Adult Female : Similar. 



Young Bieds: According to Salvadori (1895) there is very little chestnut color on the smaller upper 

 wing-coverts; under parts paler; the upper tail-coverts narrowly margined with brown. 



Young in Down: Upper parts grayish brown; lower parts whitish; a white band across the occiput 

 interrupted by the brown band which runs along the hind neck; a brown band from the ears to the 

 hind neck; no white patches on the sides of the back; a whitish band across the wing (Salvadori, 1895). 

 The specimens which I have seen, one of which is figured here, show the characteristic head pattern 

 of the other species of Tree Ducks very little, if at all developed. (See Plate 13.) 



Remarks: A new race, Dendroeygna bicolor helva (Wetmore and Peters, Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, 

 vol. 35, p. 42, 1922), separating the birds of California and our Southwest from those of southern 

 South America is based upon characters which do not seem to me to hold good. 



DISTRIBUTION 



No other known bird has a range so remarkable as this one, for it occurs unaltered in four distinct 

 zoological regions. Even the boldest of the hair-splitting systematists must, I think, admit that 

 there are no visible differences among the specimens from California, Argentina, East Africa, and 

 India. 



It is migratory to so slight an extent that it is hardly advisable, on the map, or in this discussion, 

 to make any distinction between breeding and wintering ranges beyond calling attention to the few 

 known differences as we proceed. In North America, where most is known of its movements, it is 

 very hard to separate the breeding from the wintering areas and, as Cooke (1906) has so aptly pointed 

 out, one of the northernmost records is a winter record, and one of the southernmost is a breeding 

 one. 



In North America the birds occur throughout the southern half of California, western Nevada, 

 southern Arizona, southern Texas and southern Louisiana, as well as throughout most North 

 of Mexico. America 



Barnston (Canadian Naturalist and Geologist, p. 337, 1861) claims that he shot a specimen of this 

 species on the Columbia River above Okanagan, Washington. This record seems to have been over- 

 looked by recent writers on the ornithology of this region. There was apparently a United 

 stray flock in the Puget Sound region in 1905, for on November 29, five out of a group States 

 of eleven were taken at Alborni, Vancouver Island, and on December 3, another was brought down 

 from a flock of ten at Grays Harbor (Dawson and Bowles, 1909). The Vancouver Washing- 

 record is, to my knowledge, the northernmost one for this species. In California the t° n 

 northernmost records are those at Marysville in the Sacramento Valley in winter and at Inverness in 

 Marin County (Cooke, 1906), and east of the Sierras at Owens Valley (A. K. Fisher, _ ... 

 1893) . In general, however, the species is migratory in the southwestern United States 

 (Grinnell, Bryant and Storer, 1918). Farther south it breeds as far north as Los Bafios in the San 



