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AMERICAN GREEN-WINGED TEAL. 



-aAnas carolinensis, Steph. 

 PLATE CCCXCII.— Male and Female. 



Nothing can be more pleasing to an American sportsman, than the arrival 

 of this beautiful little Duck in our Southern or Western States. There, in 

 the month of September, just as the sun sinks beneath the horizon, you may 

 find him standing on some mote or embankment of a rice-field in Carolina, 

 or a neck of land between two large ponds in Kentucky, his gun loaded 

 with number four, and his dog lying at his feet. He sees advancing from 

 afar, at a brisk rate, a small dark cloud, which he has some minutes ago 

 marked and pronounced to be a flock of Green-winged Teals. Now he 

 squats on his haunches; his dog lies close; and ere another minute has 

 elapsed, right over his head, but too high to be shot at, pass the winged 

 travellers. Some of them remember the place well, for there they have 

 reposed and fed before. Now they wheel, dash irregularly through the air, 

 sweep in a close body over the watery fields, and in their course pass near 

 the fatal spot where the gunner anxiously awaits. Hark, two shots in rapid 

 succession! The troop is in disorder, and the dog dashes through the water. 

 Here and there lies a Teal, with its legs quivering; there, one is whirling 

 round in the agonies of death; some, which are only winged, quickly and in 

 silence make their way towards a hiding-place, while one, with a single 

 pellet in his head, rises perpendicularly with uncertain beats, and falls with 

 a splash on the water. The gunner has charged his tubes, his faithful fol- 

 lower has brought up all the game, and the frightened Teals have dressed 

 their ranks, and flying now high, now low, seem curious to see the place 

 where their companions have been left. Again they fly over the dangerous 

 spot, and again receive the double shower of shot. Were it not that dark- 

 ness has now set in, the carnage might continue until the sportsman should 

 no longer consider the thinned flock worthy of his notice. In this manner, 

 at the first arrival of the Green-winged Teal in the Western Country, I have 

 seen upwards of six dozen shot by a single gunner in the course of one day. 



I have often thought that water-birds, Ducks for example, like land-birds 

 which migrate in flocks, are very apt to pass over the place where others of 

 the same kind had been before. Pigeons, Starlings, Robins, and other land- 



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