68 
SHOVELLER. 
to make her nest on the ground, with withered grass, in the midst 
of the largest tufts of rushes or coarse herbage, in the most inac- 
cessible part of the slaky marsh, and lays ten or twelve pale rust 
colored eggs ; the young, as soon as hatched, are conducted to the 
water by the parent birds. They are said to be at first very shape- 
less and ugly, for the bill is then as broad as the body, and seems 
too great a weight for the little bird to carry. Their plumage does 
not acquire its full colors until after the second moult. 
The Blue-winged Shoveller is twenty inches long, and two 
feet six inches in extent; the bill is brownish black, three inches 
in length, greatly widened near the extremity, closely pectinated 
on the sides, and furnished with a nail on the tip of each mandi- 
ble ; irides bright orange ; tongue large and fleshy ; the inside of 
the upper, and outside of the lower, mandible are grooved so as to 
receive distinctly the long separated reed-like teeth ; there is also 
a gibbosity in the two mandibles, which do not meet at the sides, 
and this vacuity is occupied by the sifters just mentioned; head 
and upper half of the neck glossy, changeable green ; rest of the 
neck and breast white, passing round and nearly meeting above ; 
whole belly dark reddish chestnut; flanks a brownish yellow, pen- 
ciled transversely Avith black, between which and the vent, which 
is black, there is a band of white ; back blackish brown ; exterior 
edges of the scapulars white ; lesser wing coverts, and some of the 
tertials, a fine light sky blue; beauty spot on the wing a changea- 
ble resplendent bronze green, bordered above by a band of Avhite, 
and below with another of velvetty black ; rest of the wing dusky, 
some of the tertials streaked down their middles Avith Avhite ; tail 
dusky, pointed, broadly edged with Avhite ; legs and feet reddish 
orange, hind toe not finned. 
With the aboA^e another Avas shot, Avhich differed in having 
the breast spotted Avith dusky, and the back Avith Avhite ; the green 
plumage of the head intermixed Avith gray, and the belly Avith cii- 
