96 
PIED DUCK. 
AJVJIS LJIBRJIDOE^. 
[Plate LXIX.— Fig. 6, Male.'] 
Gmel. Syst, I, /). 537, No. 110. — Ind. Om. p. 859, No. 67. Gen, Syn. Ill, />. 497, N'o, 46. 
— Arct. Zool. No. 488. — Peale’s Museum.^ No, 2858 ; female., No. 2859. 
THIS is rather a scarce species on our coasts, and is never 
met with on fresh water lakes or rivers. It is called by some gun- 
ners the Sand-shoal Duck, from its habit of frequenting sand-bars. 
Its principal food appears to be shell-fish, which it procures by 
diving. The flesh is dry, and partakes considerably of the nature 
of its food. It is only seen here during winter; most commonly 
early in the month of March a few are observed in our market. 
Of their particular manners, place, or mode of breeding, nothing 
more is known, Latham observes that a pair in the possession of 
Sir Joseph Banks wei’e brought from Labrador. Having myself 
had frequent opportunities of examining both sexes of these birds, 
I find that, like most others, they are subject when young to a 
progressive change of color. The full-plumaged male is as fol- 
lows : length twenty inches, extent twenty-nine inches ; the base 
of the bill, and edges of both mandibles for two thirds of their 
length, are of a pale orange color, the rest black, towards the ex- 
tremity it widens a little in the manner of the Shovellers, the sides 
there having the singularity of being only a soft, loose, pendulous 
skin ; irides dark hazel ; head, and half of the neck, white, marked 
along the crown to the hind-head with a stripe of black ; the plu- 
mage of the cheeks is of a peculiar bristly nature at the points, 
and round the neck passes a collar of black, which spreads over 
the back, rump, and tail-coverts ; below this color the upper part 
of the breast is white, extending itself over the whole scapulars. 
