10 BULLETIN 862, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
or statoblasts, of fresh-water Bryozoa. These are simple animal 
organisms which grow in colonies resembling masses of jelly, attached 
to submerged brush. Bits of hydroids (animals closely related to 
the corals) were found in 2 stomachs; spiders, in 3; water mites 
(Hydrachnidae), in 3; and the teeth or scales of small fish, in 2. 
BALDPATE. 
Mareca americana. 
Prate IT. 
Roughly speaking, the range of the baldpate, or American widgeon, 
includes practically all of North America. Its breeding range 
extends from Lake Michigan and Hudson Bay west to the Pacific 
Ocean and from Wisconsin, Colorado, and Oregon north to central 
Alaska, the Mackenzie Valley, and Fort Churchill. It does not 
breed commonly, however, east of Minnesota or south of North 
Dakota. Along the Atlantic Coast it is common in migration as far 
as Chesapeake Bay, and is only a straggler in New England and 
eastern Canada. In winter it is found as far south as Florida, Cuba, 
and Guatemala, and rarely in Costa Rica, Jamaica, Porto Rico, and 
Trinidad. Many individuals winter as far north as southern British 
Columbia, Utah, New Mexico, Illinois, and Chesapeake Bay, and a 
few occasionally remain in southern New England. 
The adult baldpate is distinguished by the following characters: 
There is a large area of white on the wings in front of the speculum, 
which is black with a narrow green area near its front edge; the top 
of the head, including the forehead, is white, producing the bald 
appearance which gives the bird its name. Just below the ‘‘bald 
spot,” covering each side of the head from the eye back to and includ- 
ing the nape of the neck, is a broad stripe of glossy green; below this 
the head and neck are mottled gray, the upper breast and sides 
pinkish brown, lower breast and belly white, under tail-coverts and 
outer upper tail-coverts black; the back is finely barred with black 
and gray or buff, and the rump is mostly white. The female lacks 
the white crown and green headband; the back is more coarsely 
mottled and streaked, and the white of the wings is less prominent. 
FOOD HABITS. 
The feeding habits of the baldpate are in general very similar to 
those of the gadwali. In some respects the similarity of the results 
obtained by computing the average percentages of certain elements 
of food in a large number of stomachs of each species is quite remark- 
able. For instance, the average proportion of pondweeds (Naiada- 
ceae) found in the gadwall stomachs was 42.33 per cent, while in the 
case of the baldpate it was 42.82 per cent. There are a few slight 
differences in the food habits of the two species, however. The bald- 
+ dam _cenmeem 
