The Shoveller 



Later in the evening, well after nightfall in fact, we went to visit 

 the nest again, determined to play the part of foster mother if a kinder 

 providence had not intervened. But the nest was empty. The poor 

 little waifs had set out at nightfall to seek for themselves their long absent 

 parent. Their plaintive, scattered pipings resounded throughout that 

 section of the swamp, but we could not recover one in the darkness, and 

 of a repentant mother there was no sign. The next day all was still. 

 The prowlers of the night tell no tales. The little tragedy was over. 

 Nothing more was ever seen of the faint-hearted Teal mother and her 

 half-brood. Instinct broke down before the unusual; and the gleam 

 of intelligence shown in meeting the challenge of the flood did not serve 

 to illuminate the darkness of a mentality which could not count its own 

 children. 



We call the Cinnamon Teal our bird; but if we do, we forget that 

 there is in South America another branch, or race, or geographical repre- 

 sentative, of the same stock. So far as known, the "species-splitters" 

 have not succeeded in detecting any valid distinction between the Cin- 

 namon Teal of South America and that of North America, 1 yet the centers 

 of the breeding ranges of the two groups lie some 5000 miles apart, the 

 one in the Pacific States of America and the other in Patagonia; and at 

 no time do the sundered fragments drift closer than within about 2000 

 miles of each other. It is a situation without an exact parallel, and we 

 are, naturally, very curious to know what might have happened in the 

 pre-glacial past to divide the house of Q. cyanoptera. 



No. 353 



Shoveller 



A. 0. U. No. 142. Spatula clypeata (Linnaeus). 



Synonyms. — Spoonbill. Spoon-bill Duck. Broad-bill. 



Description. — Adult male: Head and neck sooty black, overlaid, especially 

 above, with glossy green and glancing metallic blue or purple; lower neck and fore- 

 breast pure white; lower breast, belly, and sides purplish chestnut, the longer side- 

 feathers dusky-barred; back, narrowly-, greenish dusky, becoming greenish black on 

 rump and behind, and glossy green on sides of upper tail-coverts; crissum black, 

 separated from bell}' anteriorly by white, finely undulated with dusky; white flank- 

 patches; inner scapulars white, and inner tertiaries white-striped; wing-coverts and 

 outer webs of outer tertiaries light grayish blue ; the posterior row of coverts greenish dusky 

 at base, broadly white-tipped; speculum glossy green bounded on either side by dusky; 

 primaries dusky; axillars and lining of wings white. Bill spatulate, the upper mandible 



1 Later: They got 'em at last! 

 1778 



