AMERICAN WIDGEON. 
93 
The female has the whole head and neck yellowish white, 
thickly speckled with black ; very little rufous on the breast ; the 
back is dark brown. The young males, as usual, very much like 
the females during the first season, and do not receive their full 
plumage until the second year. They are also subject to a regular 
change every spring and autumn. 
A few of these birds breed annually in the marshes in the 
neighborhood of Duck creek, in the state of Delaware. An ac- 
quaintance of the Editor’s brought him thence, in the month of 
June, an egg, which had been taken from a nest situated in a cluster 
of alders ; it was very much of the shape of the common Duck’s 
egg ; the color a dirty white ; length two inches and a quarter, 
breadth one inch and five eighths. The nest contained eleven eggs. 
This species is seen on the Delaware as late as the first week 
of May. On the thirtieth of April last, the Editor observed a 
large flock of them, accompanied by a few Mallards and Pintails, 
feeding upon the mud-flats, at the lower end of League Island, 
below Philadelphia. In the fresh water ponds, situated in the 
neighborhood of the river St. John, in East Florida, they find an 
abundance of food during the winter; and they become excessively 
fat. It is needless to add that they are excellent eating. 
VOL. vui. 
2 A 
