RED-CRESTED POCHARD 103 



Wing 255 mm.; bill 48; tarsus 42. 



Weight up to 2 pounds, 6 ounces (Hume) (1.07 kilograms). 



Immature Male: Millais says the young male is somewhat similar to the female, only darker and 

 with an indication of a crest. The centers of the feathers of the under parts are brown instead of gray 

 and the back and front of the breast is a much darker brown. The young male and female are easily 

 recognized by the usual immature feathers on the lower breast, vent and tail-coverts, and by the 

 frayed tail. The soft parts are like those of the female. 



Eclipse Plumage: There is a very definite eclipse plumage which in general resembles the adult 

 female. I have never seen a specimen myself. It may be distinguished from the adult female by the 

 grayer upper wing-coverts, whiter speculum, more rusty head-coloring and by a brighter-colored iris 

 (Hartert, 1920a). See Millais' plate (1913). 



Young in Down: The upper parts are dull olive gray; under parts buff or yellowish gray; a buff spot 

 on either shoulder; a yellowish gray stripe passes over each eye, and in front of and behind the eye 

 runs a dark stripe which divides behind the eye. 



Iris dark brown. Bill reddish brown with the nail white. Feet ash gray with a green tinge; legs and 

 toes narrowly edged with yellowish white (Millais). In the specimens which I examined in the British 

 Museum the color was pale yellowish brown above and almost white below. The face was uniform 

 pale yellowish except for a very faint trans-ocular darker streak. The body -patches on wings, scapu- 

 lars and rump region were rather poorly defined. 



DISTRIBUTION 



Few palsearctic ducks have a more peculiar distribution than the Red-crested Pochard. There is 

 hardly a single locality in Europe in which it is common, and throughout a very large part of its range 

 its appearance is irregular and sporadic. In the British Isles it is a " very rare vagrant," British 

 having appeared but once in Ireland, near Tralee, in January, 1881 (Ussher and War- Isles 

 ren, 1900) ; and but thrice in Scotland, once near Craignish, in January, 1863 (R. Gray, 1871) and on 

 two other occasions in Argyll (Witherby et al., 1919-22). In England it has occurred a number of 

 times since 1818 in the autumn and winter and chiefly on the east coast. Witherby's Handbook 

 (Witherby et al., 1919-22) lists a number of records for Norfolk, one for Northumberland, one for 

 Yorkshire, two for Lincolnshire, two for Cambridgeshire, several for Suffolk, one for Essex, a flock of 

 eighteen seen at the mouth of the Thames, one for Staffordshire, a flock seen at the Tring Reservoirs, 

 a flock seen in Sussex, one each for Hantshire, Dorset, Cornwall, Pembroke and Westmoreland, and 

 two for Devon. 



On the Continent the species is not known ever to have occurred north of the Baltic. In Germany 

 it has certainly nested on the Krakower Lakes in Mecklenburg (Wiistnei, 1898, 1900, 1902), on the 

 salt ponds near Eisleben in Saxony (Baldamus, 1870; A. Midler, 1880) and in Silesia „ 

 (Floericke, 1898). According to Rohweder (fide Naumann, 1896-1905) it has bred in 

 Holstein, too. Beyond this the Red-crested Pochard is known to have occurred rarely in Swabia, 

 Hessia, Silesia, Lusatia, Pomerania, Anhalt, Bavaria (Naumann, 1896-1905), Rhine p . , 

 Provinces (Le Roi, 1906-07), Brandenburg (Schalow, 1915) and eastern Prussia (Tisch- 

 ler, 1910). In Poland a specimen was taken near Lublin (Taczanowski, 1888) and others have been 

 seen in Galicia where it has probably bred (von Mojsisovics, 1887; Millais, 1913). 

 Other examples have been taken in Kurland and Livland (Loudon, 1909) and near g+ a t es 

 Pskof (Zarudny, 1910) though records for St. Petersburg are probably erroneous 

 (Biichner, 1885). There are, I believe, very few records for Denmark, — July, 1872, on R uss j a 

 HindS (Liitken, 1885; Collin, 1895), — but at least a dozen for Holland, where some 

 are thought to breed (van Oort, 1905, 1911), while in Belgium it seems to be an even 



