Smew 
119 
The windpipe of the male is cylindrical in shape and widens gradually from the top 
downwards. At the point of division into the two bronchial tubes there is the usual large 
drum of bone, divided on the inner side in two halves by a wall, the left one being by far 
the larger. 
Immature Female. — The immature female in first plumage can always be distinguished 
from the adult by the more dull-brown plumage, the worn tail ends, and the dirty or black- 
edge white feathers of the median coverts. 
The adult plumage comes in slowly throughout the winter, and the new tail is gained. 
By March and April the faded and dirty-looking wing is the main point of identification. 
The whole bird is more " ragged " throughout the summer, and the change to maturity does 
not take place until the main moult in August. The young female then moults completely, 
and gradually assumes adult plumage at seventeen months. 
Adult Female. — Crown, nape, and back of the neck reddish-brown,^ the feathers on 
the back of crown and nape much elongated to form a crest. Feathers round and more 
especially in front of the eye, blackish-brown or black ; chin and throat white ; lower neck 
greyish-brown, forming a collar ; back and upper parts generally slatey-brown and much 
darker on the rump, in some cases almost black, with feathers of the mantle and scapulars 
tipped with grey ; wings like those of the male, but not so bright or grey on the long 
secondaries ; there is also no large white feather on the secondaries. Area of white on the 
median coverts dirty white ; under parts white ; flanks greyish-brown, and edged with 
light grey. Legs and bill as in the male, only duller. Irides reddish-brown. Length, 
14! inches ; wing, 7J inches ; tarsus, 1.3 inch. 
Breeding Range. 
Continental Ettrope. — John Wolley was the first to receive authentic eggs of the Smew 
and to establish the fact that the species bred in the holes of trees in Swedish Lapland. 
A full account of this appears in the Ibis (1859, pp. 69-76), which Mr. Dresser \b. of 
Europe, vi. pp. 704-8) quotes in extenso. 
Sweden. — A nest with nine eggs found at Sandhamn, near Stockholm, in June 1885 (O. 
Ekbohrn, Tidskrift ; C. A. Westerlund, Skandinav. Foglarnes Fortplantnigshis- 
toria, p. 188). On the borders of Swedish and Russian Lapland and N. Finland it breeds 
in wooded districts in the Kola Peninsula commonly, and at Enontekis, Enare, Sodankyla, 
&c., as well as on the Muonio River, near Maonioniska, and also nested at Tjomalis, near 
Quichjoch, in 1867 (C. A. Westerlund, loc. cit.). 
Russia. — S. A. Buturlin (Dresser's Eggs of B. of Europe, p. 588) says it breeds on L. 
Onega, the R. Dwina to Archangel ; rarely on the R. Oka, in the Voronesh Government ; 
the wooded parts of Petschora basin and Perm Government ; probably in the Governments 
of Twer, Novgorod, and Pskov ; in the Ufa Government and on the Middle and Lower 
Volga, but not in the Baltic Provinces, St. Petersburg or Moscow Governments, or in Don 
or Dneiper basins. 
[Roumania. — R. R. v. Dombrowski in the Zeit.f. OoL, 1904, p. 145, makes the aston- 
1 Dresser {Birds of Europe, vi. p. 700), in describing an old female from Moscow, says " on the fore part of the crown a few 
whitish feathers, &c." This must be quite abnormal, and I have never seen such a specimen. The bird he describes is probably 
a very old female slightly assuming male plumage — a not very rare circumstance in diving ducks. 
