!/ 
i8 9 2 -] Trumbull, Our Scoters. 
T 53 
OUR SCOTERS. 
by G. TRUMBULL. 
Having devoted a good deal of time to the study of these 
birds, I venture to call attention to numerous errors which have 
appeared, and to certain facts which have not appeared, concern- 
ing them. It is my intention, however, to devote the present 
article more particularly to the American Scoter, and to follow it 
at a later date with additional notes concerning the White-winged 
and Surf Scoters. The colors (in a marked degree transitory 
after death) of the bills, eyes, and feet, I have noted in each case 
within a very few minutes after the bij;d was shot. 
It seems strange we should so long have neglected to familia- 
rize ourselves more fully with the colors artel certain other char- 
acteristics of these widely distributed and easily secured species. 
They piesent suph exceptionally favorable opportunities for 
study, particularly along our sea coast, where in spring and fall 
men and boys slaughter them by hundreds and cripple them by 
thousands. They are also reached without much difficulty dur ing 
the winter months, and a few, as is well known, tarry with us 
throughout the summer.* 
American Scoter (Oidemia americana). 
Though the inaccuracies of former descriptions, to which I {j.3J7b 
would here point, are but indirectly connected with the plumage, t 0 0 
perhaps 1 had better describe, with the exception of the well- 1 
known dress of the adult male, all the variations in this bird’s ap- ^ 
peatance which I have myself noted. Indeed I do not see how I 
can well emphasize lacts which should be emphasized, without 
being thus tiresome. 
I have failed to witness most of the phases through which the 
male’s bill passes while developing from the form of the female’s 
into the swollen dimensions and brilliant coloring of the old 
*Some of those which remain are probably of the superannuated and sterile class, 
but very many of them are convalescent or recovered survivors of the last shooting 
season, pensioners, as the gunners call them, which at the time of the vernal migra- 
tion were in too crippled a condition to fly with their fellows. 
li'3-Uo° 
73 
