604 
THE WOOD DUCK. 
The European Teal (IU cracca ) is an occasional straggler in America . It is very abun- 
dant in the season in the rice plantations of the South. Its length is fifteen inches, and 
extent of wings twenty-four inches. 
The Wood Duck (Aix sponsa) is, perhaps, the most beautiful bird in Aorth America. It 
inhabits all of the northern continent, especially the United States, bree lin g in all parts ; 
wintering in the South. Audubon says of it 
“ The Wood Duck, or Summer Duck, as it is called in some quarters, breeds in the 
Middle States in April, in Massachusetts a month later, and in Nova S otia not much before 
June. It appears to prefer for breeding the hollow of a tree. I have frequently been surprised 
to see it go in and out of a hole, when their bodies while on the wi ■ g seem to be more than 
twice as large as the aperture where it had deposited its eggs. Once only I found a nest, 
WOOD DUCK.— Aix sj)onsa. 
in the fissure of a rock. On coming to a nest with eggs when the bird was absent in search 
of food, I have always found the eggs covered over with feathers and down, although quite 
out of sight, in the depth of a woodpecker’s or squirrel’s hole. On the contrary, when the 
nest was placed on a broken branch of a tree, it could easily be observed from the ground, 
on account of the feathers and sticks and withered grass about it. If the nest is placed immedi- 
ately over the water, the young, the moment they are hatched, scramble to the mouth of 
the hole, launch into the air, with their little wings and feet spread out, and drop into 
their favorite element ; but whenever their birth-place is some distance from it the mother 
carries them to it, one by one, in her bill. On several occasions I observed, however, when 
the hole was thirty, forty or more yards from a bayou or other piece of water, the mother 
suffered the young to drop on the grasses and dried leaves beneath the tree, and afterwards 
led them directly to the nearest edge of the next pool. At this early age the young answer to 
the parent’s call with a mellow pee , pee , pee-e, often and rapidly repeated. The call of the 
mother at such times is low, soft, and prolonged.” 
