RUDDY DUCK. 55 
brown ; breast and shoulders, dull brown and whitish inter- 
mixed : wings and back, marked like those of the male, but of 
a deep brownish ash in those parts which in him are black ; 
legs and feet, pale blue. The young birds, as in the other 
three species, strongly resemble the female during the first and 
part of the second year. As these changes of colour, from the 
garb of the female to that of the male, take place in the re- 
mote regions of the north, we have not the opportunity of 
detecting them in their gradual progress to full plumage. 
Hence, as both males and females have been found in the 
same dress, some writers have considered them as a separate 
species from the smew, and have given to them the title of 
the red-headed smew. 
In the ponds of New England, and some of the lakes in the 
State of New York, where the smew is frequently observed, 
these red-headed kind are often found in company, and more 
numerous than the other, for very obvious reasons, and bear, 
in the markings, though not in the colours, of their plumage, 
evident proof of their being the same species, but younger 
birds or females. The male, like the Muscovy drake and 
many others, when arrived at his full size, is nearly one-third 
heavier than the female; and this disproportion of weight 
and difference of colour, in the full-grown males and females, 
are characteristic of the whole genus. 
RUDDY DUCK. (Anzas rubidus.) 
PLATE LXXI.—Fic. 5, MALE. 
Peale’s Museum, No. 2808. 
FULIGULA RUBIDA.—BONAPARTE.* 
Fuligula (Oxyura) rubida, Bonap. Synop. p. 391.—Fuligula rubida, Worth. Zool. 
il. p. 455.—Anas Jamaicensis, Ord’s edit. p. 133. 
Tis very rare duck was shot some years ago on the river 
Delaware, and appears to be an entirely new species. The 
* Bonaparte has proposed this form as the type of a subgenus, under 
the name of Oxyura, from the form of the tail; and Mr Swainson ob- 
