The Wood Duck 



cropping of kelp was sufficient to prevent drifting, I have seen, on a 

 sunny winter's day, a dozen "rafts" of ducks, chiefly Pintails and Shovel- 

 lers, hundreds in each, soundly snoozing. 



One fact which appears to have escaped the notice of even the astute 

 authors 1 of "The Game Birds of California," is the early and abundant 

 autumnal return of the male Pintails while still in the eclipse plumage. 

 Probably the Santa Barbara coast is unusually favored in this respect, 

 because annually, in the month of August, before other reported localities 

 are talking, or even thinking of ducks, we are visited by hundreds, some- 

 times thousands, of returning migrants, invariably males. Gadwalls are 

 among them, and on the 25th of August, 191 5, I encountered upon the 

 Estero ponds, within the city limits, a close-set flock of twenty-five Blue- 

 winged Teals. But Pintails outnumber all other ducks (save resident 

 Ruddies) a hundred to one at this season. Thus, on the 21st day of 

 August, 1912, I estimated the number of Pintails on the Estero alone at 

 over a thousand. During August, 1922, the Beale Estero, or "Bird Re- 

 serve" (upon the eastern edge of Santa Barbara), was fairly crowded with 

 migrating Pintails, probably tens of thousands of them appearing and 

 passing in the course of a month. Because of the "eclipse" character of 

 the plumage — the regulation pattern of the "Lordly Pintail" is only 

 faintly outlined, all but invisible, at this time of the year — everybody 

 (including the sportsman) was asking, "What are they?" 



No. 355 



Wood Duck 



A. 0. U. No. 144. Aix sponsa (Linnaeus). 



Synonyms. — Summer Duck. "The Bride." 



Description. — Adult male: Of almost indescribable elegance; head, crested, 

 metallic and iridescent, green, purple, violet, and black; a white line from angle of 

 upper mandible along crown, and another backward from behind eye, both continued 

 in the feathers of the large occipital crest; throat white, sending up two transverse 

 bars on either side on cheek and hind-neck, fore-neck and breast rich chestnut, glossed 

 with purplish on sides of breast, and marked centrally with triangular white spots, 

 which increase in size backward; belly broadly white; sides warm fulvous, minutely 

 waved with black, the tips of the outermost feathers with broad crescentic bars of 

 black and white; chestnut of breast and fulvous of sides separated by two transverse 

 bars, the front one white, the hinder black; upperparts chiefly sooty or velvety black 

 with metallic reflections of blue, purple, green, and bronze; the anterior and marginal 

 coverts and base of primaries (all mostly concealed) plain fuscous; exposed tips of 



^lessrs. Grinnell, Bryant and Storer. The work itself is a compendium of information of marvelous accuracy, 

 interest, and completeness. 



1796 



