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with indications at present that the latter is anywhere from one and a half to twice as 
common as a whole, and except very locally, less common only in the coastal areas. 
Among the lesser species only the figures for the golden-eye show much 
more than a 10 percent change in a year's time. This is very likely because the 
Androscoggin Valley was not covered until August, by which time the golden-eye 
families had been broken up and dispersed, making only conservative estimates of 
the number of families possible. In any case, the golden-eye is a fairly common 
summer resident of extreme northern New Hampshire, as it apparently has been for 
years. 
The ring-necked duck was first found breeding in New Hampshire in 1947 at 
Fish Pond, Columbia, in the northern part of the Connecticut River drainage where 
one brood was located. The next year six broods were discovered on two different 
ponds in Jefferson, also in the upper Connecticut drainage, but over 30 miles south 
of the first record. Despite much more intensive searches the last two years, only 
one new breeding location was found in each year, though that for 1950 was the first 
in the Androscoggin Valley. A gradual increase may be looked for. 
Both mergansers are most common in northern New Hampshire, but are 
fairly common in the central part of the State. Farther south both species are rare 
or absent. The figures for the American merganser are no measure of its relative 
abundance as compared with the other ducks, since the large streams and lakes where 
it breeds have not been given much attention on the survey thus far. The hooded 
merganser, like the wood duck, has made a real comeback in recent years and appears 
to be New Hampshire's third most common nesting duck. One record of a mallard 
brood was obtained in 1950 near Concord, not far from the Merrimack River. No 
mallards are known to have been released near here, so the parent birds may not 
have been feral. This is the first such record for the survey. 
No very satisfactory classification of waterways has as yet been worked out 
for those used by duck broods, but a wide variety of habitat has already been found to 
be used by black and wood ducks and hooded mergansers, These include the several 
types of natural ponds, such as typical glacier-formed ponds, bog ponds, oxbow ponds, 
beaver ponds, as well as artificial ponds, coves in lakes and large and small streams. 
Extensive marshes are more the exception than the rule, but some sort of marshes occur 
in a good percentage of each of these types of waterways and are of course the preferred 
spots for females with young. Perhaps the best types of marsh occur in backwaters of 
large streams formed by dams, along small winding streams or around boggy ponds. 
The wood duck appears to like all types of fresh-water marshes as well as the black duck 
and is more tolerant of non-marshy types of habitat. Habitat of both types has already 
been made available to more wood ducks through nesting box distribution, which is 
continuing. 
The three remaining species show more preference for certain types of 
habitat than do the above-mentioned three. The ring-necked duck appears to prefer 
typical bog pond habitat: The golden-eye does not seem to require or even like ponds 
that have much marsh, More typical northern ponds as long as there is enough food 
is what the species prefer. The American merganser is probably most common along 
the large rivers of the north, but it appears to like large lakes almost as well. Only 
occasionally is a brood of these species found on a small stream. 
Table 3 gives the number of complete broods and the average as well as the 
maximum number of young per brood for each species for both the years 1949 and 1950. 
These figures include those from all cooperators. These data indicate that the average 
brood size for both leading species, especially the wood duck, as well as for the ring- 
necked duck and the golden-eye, was smaller in 1950 than in 1949. 
