RED-HEAD 177 



the market-shooters and sportsmen of the mid-nineteenth century. The floods on 

 these rivers are no doubt due to deforestation. From the Back Bay of Virginia, 

 which is particularly well favored by Red-heads, through Currituck Sound to the 

 salt waters of Pamlico, the species is still about as numerous as the Canvas-back; in 

 the salt water much more so. It is impossible to say how great has been the decrease 

 in the past twenty or thirty years, for the market-shooters did not keep records and 

 the clubs get very few diving ducks. ' It may be ventured, however, that the Red- 

 head began to fall off rapidly in Carolina waters after 1880, and that in recent years 

 (1912-24) it has not shown the increase that the Canvas-back has, either there or 

 in other places. 



In the old rice-growing regions of South Carolina, and in Georgia and Florida, 

 Red-heads are and always have been extremely scarce, their places being taken by 

 the Lesser Scaup. It is rather interesting to note that Audubon recorded it as more 

 abundant on the Santee River than twenty years previous to the writing of his book. 

 Now it only represents a minute fraction of one per cent of the ducks taken at the 

 Santee Club. At the Canaveral Club, on the east coast of Florida, only thirty-one 

 were shot in the thirteen years, 1908-09 to 1921-22. Along the whole Gulf Coast the 

 species is more common, though not a leading duck in the Mississippi Delta. In the 

 season of 1913-14 only 798 Red-heads were marketed in New Orleans out of a 

 total of 283,435 ducks, considerably less than three-tenths of one per cent. It seems 

 to get commoner as one goes west and really large numbers winter in southern 

 and eastern Texas. 



It is certainly scattered in its distribution in the Southwest, occurring here and 

 there in large numbers but poorly represented on the whole. When we come to Cali- 

 fornia we find the Red-head only tolerably common and far behind the Canvas-back, 

 although it is the commoner breeding bird of the two. Some statistics given by 

 Grinnell, Bryant and Storer (1918) show only 119 Red-heads reported by the Ameri- 

 can Game Transfer Company at San Francisco in the season of 1910-11, out of a 

 total of over 71,000 ducks. In this list it is only 6% of the Canvas-backs represented. 

 During the five seasons 1906-11 the Hunters Game Transfer Company of the same 

 city received only 593 Red-heads out of a total of over 357,000 ducks. In this case 

 Red-heads totalled 8.5% of the Canvas-backs. Another set of figures, compiled 

 from the records of five Game Transfer Companies in the season 1910-11 showed only 

 286 Red-heads out of a total of 185,867 ducks. Here they were only 3.5% of the 

 Canvas-backs. 



Turning to the breeding regions of the interior, Dr. Wetmore (1920) found about 

 thirty pairs nesting on Lake Burford, New Mexico, near the southern extremity of 

 the summer range, but on the Bear River marshes, Utah, a spot particularly well 

 adapted for its needs, the same writer (1921) found it by far the commonest nesting 

 duck and represented by at least 1725 pairs. In Nebraska, where the Red-head was 



