312 BUCEPHALA CLANGULA 



paaap not unlike that of the Woodcock but a trifle more prolonged and also less 

 harsh and incisive." It is often double and reminded him somewhat of the blast of a 

 penny-trumpet. Briiggemann (1876) and Gilpin (1880) seem to have been the first 

 to notice this display call or "love note" as those more poetically inclined would 

 probably term it. C. W. Townsend (1923) described it as a harsh and rasping double 

 note vibrating and searching in character and expressed by the syllables zzee-at. 

 On a calm day this note can be heard for half a mile over the still water but it is 

 certainly often inaudible at a hundred yards, just as he says. 



The croak of the female is so nearly like that of many diving ducks that it is 

 hardly worth describing. I have jotted it down as a loud guttural churr-'mg noise not 

 often repeated. I have heard her give vent to a squeaking ach or heck uttered 

 sharply on suddenly being surprised on the water with her young brood. Again the 

 harsh note of alarm may sound like the quaak of a surface-feeder, very loud, but 

 coarse and rough. Harper (MS.) heard a note like cuk-cuk-cuk-cuk, quite different 

 from the ordinary grating grrrk when four or five females were circling through the 

 woods hunting for nest-cavities. 



The young at first have a little whistled "peeping" call but later a low chirping 

 prrrp takes its place. 



The trachea of the male is sufficiently remarkable and suggests some resemblance 

 to that of the Mergansers. It was described by Willughby and Ray in 1678 and well 

 portrayed by Latham and Romsey (1798) and by Eyton (1838). The trachea itself is 

 nine inches long, the upper half of equal diameter throughout and small. At the 

 commencement of the lower half there is an irregular fusiform dilatation four times 

 the caliber of the upper part, and contractile. It consists of many joints placed 

 obliquely and "folding over each other so as to admit of its being contracted into a 

 very short compass, or dilated to a great distance, as the length of the neck may 

 require." When fresh these rings may be folded into a space not more than an inch 

 in length or drawn out to four inches. 



The bony box at the bifurcation of the trachea is large and curiously shaped, some- 

 what like the same structure in the Mergansers. 



Food. Although this is really a salt-water duck it gets along perfectly well on 

 rivers and many large sheets of fresh water. From examinations by the U.S. Bio- 

 logical Survey of some 150 stomachs collected mostly in our northern States from 

 November to April it is evident that the Golden-eye is highly carnivorous. Vegetable 

 food is by no means avoided, sometimes even considerable of it is eaten, but in gen- 

 eral it certainly makes up less than a tenth of the food of this bird. The plant ma- 

 terial eaten includes seeds of a wide variety of shrubs, grasses, sedges, and other 

 plants growing near water, as well as of the water plants themselves, such as water- 

 lilies and pond-weeds. Musk-grass and other algae are also given some preference. 



