108 THE COTTON TEAL. 
THE PLATE is an extremely satisfactory one, and represents the 
male in breeding plumage. Its only fault is, that neither on 
land nor in water do the birds ever stalk about with their legs 
visible below them. As already mentioned, it is only when rest- 
ing on branches of trees that they are ever seen standing erect 
on their legs. The chicks, with their funny little brush tails, are 
correctly figured, but there is not generally the fulvous tinge on 
the sides of the face and neck depicted in the plate. Asa rule 
these parts are white. 
During the latter part of the autumn, the winter and the early 
part of the spring, the males lose the collar round the neck, 
which is replaced by irregular banding similar to that on the 
neck of the female; the lower mandible becomes yellow, and 
generally the entire plumage closely resembles that worn by the 
female at all seasons; but the male still retains the conspicuous 
white patch on the primaries, which is entirely wanting in the 
female, as also to a certain extent the metallic green on the 
secondaries and coverts. 
The young male of the year is almost precisely like the 
female and wants the white patch on the primaries, andis only to 
be distinguished from the female, I think, by dissection, though, 
perhaps the lower mandible is never so yellow as in the 
female. 
Two OTHER closely-allied species, pulchellus and albipennis, 
of Gould (the latter differing from our bird only, I believe, in 
its larger size) are known from Australia ; a third somewhat 
different species, generically separated by some authors, LV. aurztus 
is found in Madagascar and the adjacent regions of South 
Africa. 
