GREEN* WINGED TEAL. 
125 
This, like the preceding, is a fresh water duck, common 
in our markets in autumn and winter, but rarely seen here in 
summer. It frequents ponds, marshes, and the reedy shores 
of creeks and rivers ; is very abundant among the rice planta- 
tions of the southern states ; flies in small parties, and feeds 
at night ; associates often with the duck and mallard, feeding 
on the seeds of various kinds of grasses and water plants, and 
also on the tender leaves of vegetables. Its flesh is accounted 
excellent. 
The green-winged teal is fifteen inches in length, and 
twenty-four inches in extent ; bill, black ; irides, pale brown ; 
lower eyelid, whitish ; head, glossy reddish chestnut ; from 
the eye backwards to the nape, runs a broad band of rich silky 
green, edged above and below by a fine line of brownish 
white ; the plumage of the nape ends in a kind of pendent 
crest ; chin, blackish ; below the chestnut, the neck, for three 
quarters of an inch, is white, beautifully crossed with circular 
undulating lines of black; back, scapulars, and sides of the 
breast, white, thickly crossed in the same manner ; breast, ele- 
gantly marked with roundish or heart-shaped spots of black, 
on a pale vinaceous ground, variegated with lighter tints ; 
belly, white ; sides waved with undulating lines ; lower part 
of the vent-feathers, black ; sides of the same, brownish white 
or pale reddish cream ; lesser wing-coverts, brown ash, greater, 
other wants. All the specimens brought home by the Expedition, have a 
broad transverse bar on the shoulder, which does not exist in the English one.” 
And our author, in his plate, has most distinctly marked the differences. From 
the testimony of all its describees marking the variety as permanent and similar, 
I am certainly inclined to consider this bird, though nearly allied, to be distinct ; 
and, as far as we yet know, peculiar to the northern parts of America. I 
have not been able to procure a specimen for immediate comparison, and only 
once had an opportunity of slightly examining a northern bird : in it the dis- 
tinctions were at once perceptible. From their great similarity, no observers 
have yet particularly attended to the manners of the American bird, or to the 
marking of the females. If the above observations are the means of directing 
farther attention to these points, they will have performed their intended end. 
I by no means consider the point decided. — En. 
