328 BUCEPHALA ISLANDICA 



male was taken on December 22, 1871, near Valencia (H. Saunders, 1877) and another is said to have 

 been shot in Catalufia (Vayreda, /Me Arevalo y Baca, 1887). 



Migration 



This duck is in some places local in its habits, only performing journeys to the nearest coast where 

 it settles down for the winter. The birds that nest in Alaska seem to winter in the same region. 

 Those breeding in British Columbia go down to the coasts in the cold season, while some of the nest- 

 ing birds of the Rocky Mountains are found in the open waters of the same section during winter. In 

 the East the same conditions probably apply, for the nesting (?) birds of northern Labrador and per- 

 haps West Greenland are found scattered along our North Atlantic coast as far south as Cape Cod. 

 We do not yet know where the males go after leaving the breeding females in the mountain region 

 of our West. Like the Common Golden-eye this is a late migrant, not appearing on the coast of south- 

 eastern Alaska until well on toward the end of October, while some remain late into May. 



GENERAL HABITS 



The existence of this duck is a fact of a good deal of general interest to any one who 

 cares to speculate upon the curious freaks of parallelism in Nature. Here we have 

 a bird so close in general appearance to the Common Golden-eye that even to-day 

 few ornithologists are able offhand to separate the females and the young. Only 

 the full-plumaged males are identified in the field with certainty and this leads 

 one to hazard a guess that the species may be far more common on our North 

 Atlantic coast than we think. Suppose, for example, that few of the old males (rela- 

 tively speaking) come down to our eastern coast, and that the young of the year 

 go farther south than the old ones, it may well be that this is a fairly common winter 

 visitor, for not one out of a hundred in female plumage shot by the ordinary shore- 

 gunner would receive a second look. The very best ornithologists (Brewster, Baird, 

 and others) have identified specimens wrongly and both Wilson and Audubon over- 

 looked the species entirely, or regarded it as a curious variety of the Common 

 Golden-eye. Indeed, the marked anatomical differences were not pointed out until 

 J. Bernard Gilpin, a Nova Scotia naturalist, described the trachea in 1878 (Gilpin, 

 1878). 



The noteworthy facts regarding the bird are chiefly as follows. First, its remark- 

 able distribution, breeding in Iceland, as an isolated colony, in southwestern Green- 

 land and probably in Ungava. Beyond that in a westerly direction we know noth- 

 ing about it until we get to the mountain region of western Canada which seems to 

 be its chief breeding home in North America. However, it may well be that further 

 knowledge will fill in many gaps in the region north of Hudson Bay. 



The appearance of the duck is truly remarkable, for, in spite of the fact that it has 

 a very differently shaped skull, a trachea without the great dilatation, and a smaller 

 tracheal bulb, the superficial resemblance to the true Golden-eye is extreme. 



It may as well be admitted by our at times somewhat over-enthusiastic opera- 

 glass field observers that the female or young cannot be identified with certainty. 



