Identifier: birdsofamericafr07audu (find matches)
Title: The birds of America : from drawings made in the United States and their territories
Year: 1840 (1840s)
Authors: Audubon, John James, 1785-1851 Bowen, John T., ca. 1801-1856?, lithographer
Subjects: Birds Birds
Publisher: New York : Published by J.J. Audubon Philadelphia : J.B. Chevalier
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Institution Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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or lateralparts of the head. Upper parts dusky-brown, the feathers paler on theedges; on the forehead a recurved crescentic band of black; another curveddownwards, proceeding on its side from the base of the upper mandible; aband of white on the eye; throat pale yellow, with a broad black patch onthe lower neck, the rest of the lower parts brownish-white; quills dusky, tailfeathers blackish. Total length about 5;- inches; wing from flexure 4. Second quill longest.Bill along the ridge -;, along the edge ^; tarsus f; middle toe ^, its claw i;hind toe i, its claw f-. Bill, feet and claws, black, irides hazel. The female is somewhat smaller, but is marked as in the male. Thelateral tail feathers of the latter are edged outwardly with dull white. The eggs, four or five in number, measure ^ of an inch in length by •§ inbreadth. The ground colour is light blue, freckled all over with light umberspots, so thickly concentrated towards the larger end as entirely to concealthe general colour.
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355 FAMILY XXXIX.*—ANATIN^. DUCKS.Genus V.f—FULIGULA. SEA-DUCK. COMMON AMERICAN SCAUP DUCK. FuLIGULA MARILA. PLATE CCCCLXLVIII.—Male and Female. It is extremely curious that none of the authors who have written on theornithology of our country, should have discovered that, independent of thesubject which forms this article, another species of Scaup Duck also exists,and that abundantly too, throughout the United States. Alexander Wilson figured a Scaup Duck, but in his description of theadult in winter, he says that the irides are reddish, and yet he says thatthe Scaup Duck is well known in England. Until about two years since, Ithought that I had given the history of the Common Scaup Duck, but findnow that I have been mistaken, and that all that I have said of FuligulaMarila\ must now be applied to Fuligula mariloides of Vigors. Thebird which has been described in my Ornithological Biographies, and figuredin my large plates, being in fact the Fuligula mariloides of Vigors, whode

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