The Pintail 
A Frail 
Cradle 
m 
off, on her own wings and on those of the keen northeast wind. What 
other duck of these marshes than the Green-winged Teal or the Pintail 
could quite hit that pace! She had protected her eight eggs from the 
rain until the last possible instant, and then made up well for lost time. 
The nest was typical, a rather frail affair, about the size of the crown 
of a hat, situated in a slight hollow amid not very tall grass and weeds, 
quite near some low bushes — a mere little rim of dry 
grass, lined with a moderate amount of grayish down. 
The eggs were rather small and narrow for the appar- 
ent size of the bird, and were light buff, with a decided greenish or olive 
hue. This greenish tinge distinguishes them from the white and creamy 
eggs of the Gadwall or Widgeon, and from the brown eggs of the Scaup, 
all of similar size ; while their size differentiates them from the eggs of 
the other ducks of that region. Hence an experienced person may pretty 
surely identify a Pintail’s eggs even without seeing the owner. 
The number of eggs in a set is likely to be fewer than in the case of 
the other ducks mentioned, nor is the maximum as large as with some. I 
have found probably about thirty nests of the Pintail. In records of 
twenty-one of these which were accessible, two had five incubated eggs, 
three had six, six had seven and eight, three had nine, and only one had 
ten. Its other neighbors very seldom have less than eight, nine to eleven 
being common. Of large sets, in the case of other species, I have found 
a Golden-eye with sixteen, a Ruddy Duck, Redhead, 
and Canvasback each with fifteen, and a Redhead with 
the surprising number of twenty-two, every one fertile. 
No duck is less particular about nesting near water than this species. 
Though we may see the pair swimming in the sloughs during the nesting- 
season, the nest may be almost anywhere — perhaps on a dry island or ele- 
vation in a marsh, but, as likely as not, far back on the sun-parched 
prairie, where I have found nests a mile from the nearest water. 
The Pintail and the Mallard are the earliest of the ducks to lay eggs. 
The ice does not disappear from those big lakes of the far Northwest till 
about the middle of May, but by the 25th of June I have caught young 
Pintails two months or more old, showing that the eggs were laid as early 
as the first week in April, when the country was still in the grip of winter. 
Most sets, however, seem to be laid early in May, ’yyjU 
though some are not forthcoming till late in the month, Ducklings 
very possibly after an early set had been destroyed. at Home 
The downy young are very dififerent in appearance from the young 
of other “river” ducks. Instead of being yellow and brown they are 
brownish black, mottled with whitish above and with grayish white on 
the underparts. 
These earliest broods are able to fly by the middle of July, whereas 
the late-breeding Scaups and Scoters do not mature their young before 
the first week of October. By early August there are considerable flocks 
in the prairie sloughs of young Pintails and Mallards. Having had as 
Large 
Families 
