102 
SUMMER DUCK, OR WOOD DUCK. 
AJVAS SFOJVS^. 
[Plate LXX. — Fig. 3, Male.'] 
Gmel. l,p. 539, M. 43.— /«(/. Orn. p. 871, JYo. 97. Gen. Syn. Ill, p. 546, JVo. 85 
Le Canard d^Ete, Briss. VI, p. 351, 11, pi. Jig. 2 . — Le beau Canard huppe, Buff. 
IX, p. 245. PI. Enl. 980 ; female, 981 . — Summer Duck, Catesby, I, pi. 97. — Edw. pL 
101. — Arct. Zool. No. 495 . — Peale’s Museum, No. 2872; female, 2873. 
THIS most beautiful of all our Ducks, has probably no su- 
perior among its whole tribe for richness and variety of colors. 
It is called the Wood Duck, from the circumstance of its breeding 
in hollow trees ; and the Summer Duck, from remaining with us 
chiefly during the summer. It is familiarly known in every quar- 
ter of the United States, from Florida to Lake Ontario, in the 
neighborhood of which latter place I myself met with it in Octo- 
ber. It rarely visits the seashore, or salt marshes ; its favorite 
haunts being the solitary deep and muddy creeks, ponds, and mill- 
dams of the interior, making its nest frequently in old hollow trees 
that overhang the water. 
The Summer Duck is equally well known in Mexico and 
many of the West India Islands. During the whole of our winters 
they ai'e occasionally seen in the states south of the Potomac. 
On the tenth of January I met with two on a creek near Peters- 
burgh in Virginia. In the more northern districts, however, they 
are migratory. In Pennsylvania the female usually begins to lay 
late in April or early in May. Instances have been known where 
the nest was constructed of a few sticks laid in a fork of the 
branches ; usually, however, the inside of a hollow tree is select- 
ed for this purpose. On the eighteenth of May I visited a tree 
containing the nest of a Summer Duck, on the banks of Tuckahoe 
