26 SPATULA CLYPEATA 



The incubation period is from twenty-two to twenty-four days (Naumann, 1896- 

 1905; Cook, fide Job, 1915; Wonnald, in litt.). The males desert the females soon after 

 incubation has begun and, like other surface-feeders, gather into little bands, be- 

 ginning after a week or two to change into eclipse. At the Athabasca delta a male 

 beginning to go into eclipse was taken by Mr. Harper (MS.) as early as June 29, but 

 males that had left the females were not common till after the first of July. Flightless 

 males were shot on July 16. Mr. A. Wolfe of Edmonton, Alberta, has just written 

 me that he has often seen male Shovellers accompanying the broods; and Ussher and 

 Warren (1900) remark that the male shows concern for the young. A certain 

 McWilliams (1916) says he has seen the male staying near the nest while its mate 

 was incubating. A still more extreme case is quoted in the first edition of Saunders' 

 Manual, but is discreetly omitted from the second. It is to the effect that on June 

 22, 1886, Mr. J. Whitaker found a male sitting upon three eggs. All such cases of 

 exaggerated parental instinct in this sex must at best be exceptional, though no 

 doubt they do occasionally occur in all species of shoal-water ducks. 



Status. Although so widely distributed, the Shoveller occurs in great numbers 

 with us only through a somewhat narrow range of country between the Mississippi 

 Valley and the high plains just east of the Rockies. A certain number migrate 

 through the Great Lakes region, but very few reach the Atlantic coast north and 

 east of Delaware and Chesapeake Bays. At Long Point, on the northern shore of 

 Lake Erie, they occur in those famous marshes so rarely that they are not entered on 

 the shooting records of the Long Point Club. In the first week in October, 1916, I 

 saw only one there, and I was informed that no more than six to twenty were ever 

 taken in a season. Possibly conditions there are not exactly suited to this species, 

 because at the Monroe Marsh near the west end of Lake Erie, between 1885 and 

 1901, there were 680 Shovellers taken, making an average of forty per season. The 

 smallest number taken in any one year was three, in 1900; and the largest number 

 109, in 1898. 



All over New England this is one of the rarest of the surface-feeding ducks, having 

 about the same status as the Gadwall. For all these States together there are not 

 more than perhaps fifty records. A fairly correct idea of its status in Essex County, 

 Massachusetts, may be obtained from my own records of twenty-three years' shoot- 

 ing at Wenham Lake. During that entire period only five specimens were shot: one 

 on October 8, 1901; one on November 6, 1903; and three on October 15, 1910. No 

 others were even seen. Forbush (1912) seems to assume without very substantial 

 evidence that the Shoveller was formerly a much more common bird in Massachu- 

 setts than it is at present. He even goes so far as to quote a supposed instance of the 

 species breeding on Martha's Vineyard (No Man's Land) off the Massachusetts 

 coast, on May 22, 1602 (Archer's account of Gosnold's voyage). I doubt if the 



