Exceptional Abundance of the Shoveller at Portland, Me.— 
The Shoveller (Spatula cly-peata) is so rare a bird in Maine that I was 
not a little surprised to find five handsome males hanging in one of our 
city markets on April 18 of this year. Suspecting that the unusually 
bleak weather of the season might have driven others to the vicinity, I 
watched the markets closely for several days subsequent, and was rewarded 
by detecting two more birds, one of them a female. Four other specimens 
were received by Mr. A. Nelson, taxidermist, making a total of eleven 
birds taken between April iS and 23. All of these, with the exception of 
one female, which was killed in a pond on Cape Elizabeth, were said to 
have been shot in Casco Bay. 
Until this yeai, but three instances of the Shoveller’s occurrence in this 
vicinity have come to my knowledge. In September, 1876, I examined 
two specimens which were taken on Scarborough marsh, and on April 14, 
1879, I received a female from one of the littoral islands of the same 
township.— Nathan Clifford Brown, Portland, Me. 
BttU,N.O.C. 9, July, X8Q1, p, 
/rr. 
