120 



THE GADWALL. 

 A?{AS STBEPERA. 

 [Plate LXXL— Fig. 1.] 



he Chilean, Bkiss. VI, p. 339. 8. pi. SB. fig. i. — Burr. IX, 187 PI. Enl. 9B8.—Arct. Zool. p. 575.— 



Lath. Syn. Ill, p. 515. — ^Peale's Museum^ JVo. 2750. 



THIS beautiful Duck I have met with in very distant parts of 

 the United States, viz. on the Seneca lake in New York, about the 

 twentieth of October, and at Louisville on the Ohio, in February. 

 I also shot it near Big Bone Lick in Kentucky. With its parti- 

 cular manners or breeding place, I am altogether unacquainted. 



The length of this species is twenty inches, extent tliirty one 

 inches ; bill two inches long, formed very much like that of the 

 Mallard, and of a brownish black ; crown dusky brown, rest of 

 the upper half of the neck brownish white, both thickly speckled 

 with black ; lower part of the neck and breast dusky black, ele- 

 gantly ornamented with large concentric semicircles of white; 

 scapulars waved with lines of white on a dusky ground, but nar- 

 rower than that of the breast; primaries ash; greater wing coverts 

 black, and several of the lesser coverts immediately above chesnut 

 red ; speculum white, bordered below with black, forming three 

 broad bands on the wing of chesnut, black, and white ; belly 

 dull white; rump and tail coverts black, glossed with green; tail 

 tapering, pointed, of a pale brown ash edged with white ; flanks 

 dull white elegantly waved ; tertials long, and of a pale brown, 

 legs orange red. 



The female I have never seen. Latham describes it as fol- 

 lows : " differs in having the colors on the wings duller, though 

 marked the same as the male ; the breast reddish brown spotted 



