84 



SCAUP DUCK. 

 ANAS MARILA. 

 [Plate LXIX.— Fig. 3.] 



Le petit Morillon raye, Beiss. VI, p. M6. 26. Jl. — Arct. Zool. Xo. 498.^ — ^Lath. Syn. Ill, p. 500. — 



Peace's Museum, JV*o. 2668. 



THIS Duck is better known among us by the name of 

 the Blue Bill, It is an excellent diver; and according to Wil- 

 loughby feeds on a certain small kind of shell fish called Scaups 

 whence it has derived its name. It is common both to our fresh 

 water rivers and sea shores in winter. Those that frequent the 

 latter are generally much the fattest, on account of the greater 

 abundance of food along the coast. It is sometimes abundant in 

 the Delaware, particularly in those places where small snails, its 

 favorite shell fish abound; feeding also, like most of its tribe, by 

 moonlight. They generally leave us in April, tho I have met with 

 individuals of this species so late as the middle of May, among the 

 salt marshes of New Jersey. Their flesh is not of the most deli- 

 cate kind, yet some persons esteem it. That of the young birds 

 is generally the tenderest and most palatable. 



The length of the Blue Bill is nineteen inches, extent twenty 

 nine inches ; bill broad, generally of a light blue, sometimes of a 

 dusky lead color ; irides reddish ; head tumid, covered with plu- 

 mage of a dark glossy green, extending half way down the neck ; 

 rest of the neck and breast black, spreading round to the back ; 

 back and scapulars white, thickly crossed with waving lines of 

 black ; lesser coverts dusky, powdered with veins of whitish, pri- 

 maries and tertials brownish black; secondaries white, tipt with 

 black, forming the speculum ; rump and tail coverts black ; tail 



