The Black-bellied Tree Duck 

 No. 378 



Black-bellied Tree Duck 



A. O. U. No. 177. Dendrocygna autumnalis (Linnaeus). 



Description. — Adult: General body plumage rich reddish brown (auburn); 

 head and neck buffy brown, save on crown, which is auburn, and hind-neck, deep 

 chestnut; posterior half of body black, shading on lower tail-coverts to pure white of 

 distal portions; lining and edge of wing brownish black, the flight-feathers pure black; 

 the superior and proximal portions of wing-coverts variously ochraceous, shading into 

 gray and grayish buffy of inferior and distal portions. Bill and feet (drying) light. 

 Length 508-609.6 (20.00-24.00); wing about 241.3 (9.50); bill 50.8 (2.00); tarsus 2.45 

 (62.2). 



Recognition Marks. — Crow size; somewhat like D. bicolor, but black belly and 

 wing extensively whitish, distinctive. 



Nesting. — Not known to breed in California. Nest: A hollow in tree scantily 

 lined with feathers and down. Eggs: 10-16; dull white or yellowish white. Av. size 

 54.5 x 39 (2.15 x 1.53); index 71.1. Season: Late April-July; two broods. 



General Range. — Middle America from the valley of the Rio Grande in Texas 

 to Panama. Casual in Arizona, California and Jamaica. 



Occurrence in California. — Casual; one record — from Imperial County. 



Authorities. — H. C. Bryant, Condor, vol. xvi., 1914, p. 94 (Imperial Valley, 

 one spec); Phillips, Nat. Hist, of the Ducks, vol. i., 1922, p. 157, pi. 11 (monogr.). 



RANSACKING the markets used to be a favorite and by no means 

 unfruitful pursuit on the part of the birdmen of San Francisco and 

 Los Angeles. Now that the marketing of ducks and geese is no longer in 

 vogue, we shall doubtless have to go further — and more healthily — 

 afield for our "records." The last prize to fall into the ornithological 

 clutches before the sale of game was abolished was this Black-bellied 

 Tree Duck, a handsome male, which was discovered and rescued by Mr. 

 Vernon Shepherd, a San Francisco taxidermist, from a lot shipped up in 

 the fall of 1912 from an Imperial Valley point. Mr. H. C. Bryant dis- 

 covered the taxidermist and the mounted specimen, and so clinched the 

 record. 



This duck was probably a fall wanderer, an adventurer from the 

 South, who came unwittingly to spy out the land. If other such should 

 find the land good — and were not shot at sunrise for their pains — we 

 might expect a colonizing movement of Black-bellies to set in this direc- 

 tion, much after the fashion of D. bicolor at some earlier date. But what 

 are the real chances of so exceptional and so notable a bird running the 

 gauntlet of gun-fire which begins at Calexico and ends at Crescent City, 720 

 miles as the duck flies:' It is precisely so that humanity has rewarded its 

 own pioneers — the cross, the gibbet, or the stake — and of course eventual 



1875 



