330 
The Surf Scoter 
Slave Lake, and southern Alaska. Audubon, describing a nest that he 
found in Labrador, wrote : 
‘Tor more than a week after we had anchored in the lovely harbour 
of Little Alacatina, I had been anxiously searching for the nest of this 
species, but in vain ; the millions that sped along the shores had no regard 
to my wishes. At length I found that a few pairs had remained in the 
neighborhood, and one morning, while in the company of Captain Emery, 
searching for the nests of the Red-breasted Merganser, over a vast and 
treacherous fresh-water marsh, I suddenly started a female Surf Duck 
from her treasure. We were then about five miles distant from our har- 
bour, from which our party had come in two boats, 
Exp^Hence fully five and a half miles from the waters of the 
Gulf of St. Lawrence. The marsh was about three 
miles in length, and so unsafe that more than once we both feared, as we 
were crossing it, that we might never reach its margin. 
“The nest was placed amid the tall leaves of a bunch of grass, and 
raised fully four inches above its roots. It was entirely composed of 
withered and rotted weeds, the former being circularly arranged over the 
latter, producing a well-rounded cavity, six inches in diameter, by two 
and a half in depth. The borders of this inner cup were lined with the 
down of the bird, in the same manner as the Eider Duck’s nest, and in it 
lay five eggs, the smallest number I have ever found in any Duck’s nest. 
They were two inches and two-and-a-half eighths in length, by one inch 
and five-eighths in their greatest breadth; more equally rounded at both 
ends than usually ; the shell perfectly smooth, and of a uniform pale 
yellowish or cream-color.’’ 
In a letter which the writer recently received from W. E. Clyde Todd 
there occurs this statement : 
“The Surf Scoter breeds on Charlton Island, near the head of James 
Bay, and along the east coast of the same, as far south as the Sheppard 
Islands, in latitude 52° 45', at both of which localities I encountered 
young birds in the summer of 1912. On July 12, at Charlton, a brood of 
four ducklings, not over a week or ten days old, accompanied by their 
parents, were discovered in a small lake hidden away in the woods, nearly 
two miles from the shore. This raised the question 
Nesting in whether the old birds are accustomed to seek out 
ames ay s^ch retired situations as nesting-places, and when 
and how the young are conducted to the open waters of the bay. 
“Later in the season (August 3) a female Scoter with her brood 
was met with in a sheltered cove along the shore of one of the Sheppard 
Islands. The young at once made for the shore, while she pattered ofif 
in an opposite direction, endeavoring to draw attention to herself — just 
as I have seen other ducks do under similar eircumstances.” 
The male of this duek has a striking appearance, as may be seen from 
the accompanying drawing. His face can hardly be said to be handsome, 
however, and yet no less an authority than William Leon Dawson says 
