102 
HOODED MERGANSER. 
HOODED MERGANSER— MERGES CUCULLATUS. 
Plate LXIX. Fig. 1. 
L’Harle huppe de Virginie, JBriss. vil. p. 258. 8. — -PZ. JEnl. 935. — L’Harle cou- 
ronne, Buff. viii. p. 280 Round-crested duck, JEdw. pi. 360. — Cateshy, i. pi. 94. 
— Arct. Zool. No. 467. — Lath. Syn. 10. p. 426. — Beale s Museum^ No. 2930. 
MERGUS CUCULLATUS— hiNNjEVS. 
Mergus cucullatus, Cuv. Regn. Anim. i. p. 540. — Bonap. Synop. p. 397. — Selby, 
Illust. Brit. Ornith. pi. 58. 
This species, on the sea-coast, is usually called the hairy 
head. They are more common, however, along our lakes and 
fresh- water rivers than near the sea ; tracing up creeks, and 
visiting mill ponds, diving perpetually for their food. In the 
creeks and rivers of the southern states, they are very fre- 
quently seen during the winter. Like the red-breasted, they 
are migratory, the manners, food, and places of resort of both 
being very much alike. 
The hooded merganser is eighteen inches in length, and two 
feet in extent ; bill, blackish red, narrow, thickly toothed, and 
furnished with a projecting nail at the extremity; the head is 
ornamented with a large circular crest, which the bird has the 
faculty of raising or depressing at pleasure; the fore part of 
this, as far as the eye, is black, thence to the hind head, white, 
and elegantly tipt with black ; it is composed of two separate 
rows of feathers, radiating from each side of the head, and 
which may be easily divided by the hand ; irides, golden ; eye, 
very small ; neck, black, which spreads to and over the back ; 
part of the lesser wing-coverts, very pale ash, under which the 
greater coverts and secondaries form four alternate bars of 
black and white ; tertials, long, black, and streaked down the 
middle with white ; the black on the back curves handsomely 
round in two points on the breast, which, with the whole lower 
