Anas obscura rubripes. 
Vol. XIXI Brewster, An Undescribed Form of Black Duck. 1 85 
1902 J 
chrome to canary or sulphur yellow, the legs and toes bright red, 
varying from light scarlet to deep orange, the dark feathers of 
the pileum and nape conspicuously margined with gray or fulvous, 
and the throat (as well as sometimes the chin, also) profusely 
spotted or streaked with blackish. All the dark markings on the 
cheeks, throat and neck are broader, blacker and more sharply 
defined than in true obscura and they often take the form of coarse, 
rounded spots which are seldom if ever present on the head or 
neck of the smaller bird. 
In typical examples of obscura the bill is greenish black, dusky 
olive, or olive green, the legs are olivaceous brown with, at 
most,’ only a tinge of reddish, the pileum and nape nearly or quite 
uniformly dark, the throat and chin immaculate, the markings on 
the neck and sides of the head fine, linear, and dusky rather than 
blackish. In respect to these characteristics obscura does not 
seem to vary with age or season for my series includes several 
young not sufficiently large- and fully feathered to have been able 
to fly which are colored and marked precisely like specimens 
killed in late autumn, while breeding birds are distinguishable 
from the latter only by the more worn and faded appearance of 
their plumage. The males of both forms, however, are almost 
invariably larger than the females as well as more richly colored 
and heavily marked, especially on the head and neck; a fact 
which should be borne carefully in mind when specimens of the 
two are compared. _ . 
Both races are evidently subject to a good deal of individual or 
geographical variation which tends to connect them by a series of 
intergrading specimens. Thus I have small birds with grayish 
crowns or streaked throats and even one or two which, m life, 
apparently had yellow bills and red legs, while several of the large 
ones have plain black crowns or immaculate throats. I have yet 
to see a specimen of obscura , however, which possesses the coarse, 
rounded, deep black spots that are usually present in greater or 
less numbers on the neck, as well as often on the throat, of 
rubripes • 
The existence of a small percentage of non-typical examples, 
like those just mentioned, does not necessarily affect the diagnos¬ 
tic value of the characters to which I have called attention. 
