- 34 THE CONDOR Vol. xx and finished off by the long pin tail. A most elegant figure he made compared With the squat Shoveller lying low on the water. While the responsible drakes of both kinds'watched me, the Pintail looking over the grass tops at me, the Shoveller eyeing me from between the blades, thei? brown mates sat around in- conspicuously among the weeds feeding or resting, as if confident that they ?a?e?'e well guarded. From the slo'ugh one day late in June, several rods away I discovered' the long white neck Of a Pintail rising from the grass. When he
turned'away for a moment the white line went out. ' After ?vatching me for
some time he lowered his long white streak to a short white patch. Then I dis- covered another.white streak a few feet away, and. finally made out the dim 'brown forms of the two ducks. When I rose, all four of the illusory forms took wing.
As I sat watching th'e slough one day six Blue-wihged Teal fie?v over from
?the black streak, the males in their handsome breeding plumage of ?varm brown marked with white and blue patches. Disregarding me in their preoc- 'cupation, they lit in a close group and began a curious performance, all six raising and lowering their heads in a droll way that suggested the more elab- orate courtship of the Albatrosses of Laysan Island. After a time all but one duck and drake subsided, but as they separated a little from the group and kept on bowing to each other---if this stiff jumping-jack motion could be called a bow--two drakes walked up to put in an oar. It was too late; however, the
die had been cast, and the happy pair, turning their backs on their rejected
suitors, waddied off onto the dry pasture where good nesting sites might easily be found. Just then a dun-colored Willet lit nearby and on discovering me crouched
over the ground' one moment, jerked up its long bill the next, and shortly
after, with a slight note, flew off, revealing its striking black and white mark- ings. The only other time that I saw the quiet Blue-winged Teal make any dem.? onstration was about a week later, when one climbed up on a stone near a Seaup drake and did head exercises. As the Seaup paid no attention to him he quickly subsided, however. At this time of year, before the striking breed- ing plumage had been replaced by the dull brown eclipse plumage, the Teal were very handsome, especially when seen broadside in 'flight or in standing
conspicuously on a stone, the'white face crescent, reddish brown body, and flat
blue wing patch distinguishing them. 'When flying or swimming from you, two round white spots each side of the rump marked them. One of the birds in flying was heard to give a soft rather thin seep-seep-seep, suggesting the soft whistle of the Wood Duck. While the ducks occupied the sloughs, from the weeds of the surrounding pastul-e and the wires of the adjoining fences came the small songs of Savannah Sparrows--the commonest songsters of the prairie, like a monotonous accom- paniment for the loud varied outpouring of the Western Meadowlark and the insistent wreechy-wreechy-wrecchy of the Maryland Yellow-throat, singing in the snowberry thicket. A Barn Swallow, doubtless from the colony nesting in the barn, occasionally flew down to the edge of the water for a drink, as he flew off sho,&ing the white spots on his spread fork. Crows cawed, Kingbirds --both the eastern and the Arkansas--flew about the fences, their yellow and white breasts contrasting markedly. Sometimes a Yellow-headed Blackbird and a Bobolink added their notes to the pasture medley.
