108 
RED-BREASTED MERGANSER. 
should be any such, as this bird is capable of taking flight as readily as any 
with which I am acquainted. It uses the greatest precaution in retiring to 
the nest ; and on more occasions than one I have remained well concealed at 
a short distance for upwards of an hour before the bird came back to her 
eggs. Perhaps this may tend to shew that there is less necessity for keeping 
the eggs warm, even when they are about to be hatched, in this than in 
other species, which are known to resume incubation as soon as possible. 
The young betake themselves to the water a few hours after birth, and 
are from the first so expert at diving as to be procurable only with great 
difficulty. Indeed, when they are about a fortnight old, they move with 
astonishing rapidity, whether on the surface, where they run with almost 
the speed of a greyhound, or in the water itself, in which they shew them- 
selves as much at home as if they were seals or otters. The only means 
of catching them that I have found successful is to throw stones at them, 
whenever they rise, until becoming fatigued, they make for the shore, 
where they stretch themselves out and remain quite still, so that you may 
go up to them and take them with the hand. 
At the approach of autumn they resemble the old females ; but the sexes 
can easily be distinguished by examining the unguis or extremity of the 
upper mandible, which will be found to be white or whitish in the males, 
and red or reddish in the females. The young males begin to assume the 
spring dress in the beginning of February, but they do not acquire their 
full size and beauty until the second year. 
The Red-breasted Merganser is a shy bird. The males especially are 
extremely suspicious and vigilant, after they have left the females incubating, 
and when they congregate in flocks of from five to twenty on some 
sequestered clear stream, to renew their plumage. The moult is completed 
in the end of July or beginning of August, and at that season I had the 
greatest difficulty in procuring them, for, being then almost unable to rise 
from the water, they seemed to dive with an alertness proportionally greater. 
The flesh of this bird is tough, and has a fishy taste. I have represented 
a male and a female, along with a new species of Sarracenia, which is found 
abundantly from Pensacola to] Georgia, as well as in some parts of South 
Carolina. 
Red-breasted Merganser, Mergus* Serrator, Wils. Amer. Orn., vol. viii. p. 91. 
Mergus Serrator, Bonap. Syn., p. 397. 
Mergus Serrator, Red-breasted Merganser , Swains, and Rich. F. Bor. Amer., vol 
ii. p. 462. 
Red-breasted Merganser, Nutt. Man., vol. ii. p. 463. 
Red -breasted Merganser, Mergus Serrator , Aud. Orn. Biog., vol. v. p. 92. 
Male, 24*, 33. Female, 24, 34£. 
