112 
ANATIDAS. 
In Colonel Hawkers instructions to Young Sportsmen' an 
excellent account of wigeon, and the methods of shooting them, is 
given. 
THE AMERICAN WIGEON. 
Anas Americana , Gmel. 
Is, on the following testimony, believed to have been 
obtained. 
9 
As recorded by me in the f Annals of Natural History ' for 1845 
(vol. xv. p. 310) : — Henry Bell, an intelligent man of middle age, 
who since he could carry a gun has been a wigeon-shooter in 
Belfast Bay, and for the last eight or nine winters has given up 
his whole time to the pursuit, by which he earned his livelihood, 
visited Strangford Lough “ professionally " towards the end of 
February 1844, with his punt and swivel-gun. Hearing on a 
dark night the call of wigeon,* he fired towards the place whence 
the sound proceeded, and picked up a single bird, which differed 
in plumage from any he had ever seen. Its form at once marked 
this bird to his eye as a wigeon of some kind, but in a state of 
plumage unlike that of the common species of either sex at any 
age : of this he was a good judge, from many hundreds having 
passed through his hands, and from his being very observant of 
the species of birds and the changes of plumage which they 
undergo. He described it as a wigeon in the plumage of a teal. 
The large markings on the lower part of the sides of the neck and 
on the breast, instead of being roundish as in the teal, were some- 
what of a semicircular form, and varied in size from “ one half to 
nearly the whole size of a man's finger-nail." On the top of the 
head it was whitish like the old male wigeon, but of a purer 
colour, and, like it, had the white marking on the wing, both 
* According to Wilson’s description of the call of the American wigeon, it is very 
like that of the European species. 
