14 PIED DUCK. 
PIED DUCK. (Anas Labradora.) 
PLATE LXIX'—Fie. 6. 
Arct. Zool. No. 488.—Lath. Syn. iii. p. 497.—Peale’s Museum, No. 2858. 
FULIGULA LABRADORA.—BONAPARTE.* 
Fuligula Labradora, Bonap. Synop. p. 391. 
Tis is rather a scarce species on our coasts, and is never 
met with on fresh-water lakes or rivers. It is called by some 
gunners the sand-shoal duck, from its habit of frequenting 
sandbars. Its principal food appears to be shellfish, which 
it procures by diving. The flesh is dry, and partakes consider- 
ably of the nature of its food. It is only seen here during 
winter ; most commonly early in the month of March a few 
are observed in our markets. Of their principal manners, 
place, or mode of breeding, nothing more is known. Latham 
observes that a pair in the possession of Sir Joseph Banks 
were brought from Labrador. Having myself had frequent 
opportunities of examining both sexes of these birds, I find 
that, like most others, they are subject, when young, to a pro- 
gressive change of colour. The full-plumaged male is as 
follows :—Leneth, twenty inches ; extent, twenty-nine inches ; 
the base of the bill, and edges of both mandibles for two-thirds 
of their length, are of a pale orange colour; the rest, black ; ~ 
towards the extremity it widens a little in the manner of the 
shovellers, the sides there having the singularity of being only 
a soft, loose, pendulous skin ; irides, dark hazel; head and 
half of the neck, white, marked along the crown to the hind 
head with a stripe of black; the plumage of the cheeks is of 
a peculiar bristly nature at the points, and round the neck 
passes a collar of black which spreads over the back, rump, 
* The Prince of Musignano places this bird among the Fuligule. I 
have had no opportunity of seeing the bird itself, and cannot therefore 
speak from examination as to its station. It seems a true sea-duck, and 
agrees in general habits with the scaups and pochards.—Ep. 
