LONG-TAILED DUCK. 
91 
middle in the water, while they dived before me like so many Water- 
witches, the moth«rs keeping aloof, and sounding their notes of alarm and 
admonition. I was fortunate enough tp procure several of the young birds, 
and afterwards shot one of the old, which having young much smaller than 
the rest, was more anxious for their safety, and kept with them within 
shot. She and the young were afterwards put in rum, to be subsequently 
examined. I counted eleven broods on the same pond, and Mr. Jones 
assured me that these birds always breed in numbers together, but rarely 
on the same lake two successive years. Their plumage was ragged, in so 
far as I could judge, and the individual which I shot was similar. They 
never dived while in my sight, but seemed constantly to urge their young 
to do so, and the little things so profited by the advice of their parents, 
that had they remained in the water, instead of making, after awhile, for 
the land, I believe I should not have succeeded, after all my exertions, in 
capturing a single one of them. 
The gentleman above mentioned informed me that the old birds keep the 
young in the ponds until they are quite able to fly, or until the end of 
August, when the flocks remove on wing to the sea, and soon after leave -the 
coast, seldom reappearing before the first days of May, or about two weeks 
before most other kinds of Ducks. The little ones which I procured, were 
as you see them represented in my plate. Those that were larger were of 
the same colour, and none showed any feathers on their bodies. Now and 
then, like all other young Ducks, they would skim over the surface of the 
water with astonishing rapidity, emitting a sharp note somewhat resembling 
the syllables pee, pee , pee, and would then dive with the quickness of 
thought. When squatted among the moss, they allowed me to take them 
without making any attempt to escape. The young were put in a tub, 
and had some soaked biscuit placed near them ; but they were all found 
dead the next morning. 
The range of this noisy, lively, and beautiful Duck, extends along our 
coast as far south as Texas, and it is also found at the mouth of the Columbia 
river; but the species is never 'found on any of our fresh-water courses, and 
I am quite confident that Mr. Say mistook for it the Pintail Duck, Anas 
acuta, when he says that he found it on the waters of the Missouri. 
During all my residence in the neighbourhood of the Mississippi, and in the 
course of all- my journeys on and along its waters, I never saw one of these 
birds, or heard of any having occurred on. that stream above its confluence 
with the Gulf of Mexico; whereas the Pintails are extremely abundant there, 
as well as on the Missouri, the Ohio, and all our western streams, in spring 
and autumn. Pew Long-tailed Ducks are to be seen in the market of New 
