186 
ANAS CLYPEATA. 
most inaccessible part of the slaky marsh, and lays ten 
or twelve pale rust coloured egg's ; the young*, as soon 
as hatched, are conducted to the water by the parent 
birds. They are said to be at first very shapeless 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 colours 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 mandible ; 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 reedlike 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 
yellowy penciled transversely w r ith black, between which 
and the vent, which is black, is a band of white ; back, 
blackish bro wn ; 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 changeable 
resplendent bronze green, bordered above by a band of 
white, and below with another of velvety black ; rest 
of the wing, dusky, some of the tertials streaked down 
their middles with white ; tail, dusky, pointed, broadly 
edged with white ; legs and feet, reddish orange, hind 
toe not finned. 
With the above another was shot, which differed in 
having the breast spotted with dusky, and the back 
with white; the green plumage of the head intermixed 
with gray, and the belly with circular touches of white, 
evidently a young male in its imperfect plumage. 
The female has the crown of a dusky brown ; rest of 
the head and neck, yellowish white, thickly spotted with 
