SPINOUS SQUAT-DUCK.[127]
Erismatura spinosa.
| Anas spinosa, | Lath.—Pl. enl. 967. |
[127] Length 13½ inches, expanse 19½, flexure 5¹⁄₁₀, tail 2½, breadth of beak at tip ¹³⁄₂₀, rictus 1½, tarsus 1³⁄₁₀, middle toe 2. Irides black; beak glaucous green, culmen blackish, under mandible colour of the nails; feet yellowish-grey, webs paler. Upper head deep bistre; neck minutely mottled with bistre and pale umber. Back, scapulars, and less wing-coverts bistre, each feather tipped and transversely banded with pale umber; feathers on rump velvety, minutely mottled with deep brown and whitish. Tail-coverts mottled with dark brown and bright bay. Tail of 18 feathers, very narrow, black, worn at tips, the shafts extending beyond the vanes. Wings smoke-black; first primary rudimentary; second and third sub-equal; the first five secondaries have the basal three-fourths of the outer webs pure white, and their greater coverts wholly white, forming a white patch in centre of wing. Sides of head marked by two bands of brown, one passing through the eye, the other from rictus to ear; over each of which is a parallel band of pale brown. Chin and throat pale bay, satiny; breast and belly pale buff, mottled obscurely with blackish. Tail-coverts both above and below, hardly differing from clothing-feathers. Inner surface of wings shining grey. Form broad and flattened.
In a broad piece of water near Radonda, which is crossed by the high road from Savanna le Mar to Negril, and which is connected with the vast morass that lies behind the former town, I have seen these curious little Ducks. Rarely more than three are visible at one time, scattered over the water, often very near the road. They pay very little attention to passing travellers; but if one stop and gaze at them, they take alarm, and sink the body lower into the water, until the back is level with the surface. If they suspect danger, they gradually sink wholly under water; and if suddenly alarmed they thus immerse themselves in a moment, not diving as other water birds do, but sinking as they sit, causing scarcely a ruffle of the surface. I have found them excessively wary, and difficult to shoot; because if they come up and still suspect danger, they immediately sink again, and remain beneath an incredible while, even for several hours, unless they can manage to expose the nostrils to the surface without appearing. When they do rise, it is in the same noiseless, almost imperceptible manner, and in the same posture as they went down. Occasionally they fly, or rather flutter with much flapping of wings, and apparently painful exertion, across the pond, splashing the surface as they go; and I have seen one take a higher flight across the road to the lower water. When undisturbed, they sit long in one place, and spend a good deal of time in smoothing their plumage.
The stomach of the specimen I obtained, a male, from which the description was taken, contained only seeds mostly comminuted.
From a recent letter of Mr. Hill’s I extract the following notes. “We have certainly two if not three different Pond Ducks. With two I am familiarly acquainted. One is a very beautiful little bird, with such a prevalence of yellow and red ochre in the plumage, and with the usual crescent shaped ocellated markings of the Duck tribe, so dark, as to give it a very quail-like appearance. It has in consequence been commonly designated the Quail-duck.[128] The secondaries of the wing are white; the head is dappled black and ochry-white, and the bill is a brilliant cobalt-blue. The tail is stiff and curved upwards, with (I think) 16 black feathers which radiate broad and distinct, without any lapping of one feather over another. In the nestling bird the feathers are differently formed. They are unwebbed in the centre of the shaft, the terminal plumes being few, and curved like the Υ of the Greek alphabet.
[128] Hence my friend proposes to name it Erismatura ortygoides.
“The other is a short squat Duck, almost square in form, the breadth of its body being equal to its length, and uniformly coloured wood-brown;—a description of the plumage not perhaps very precise, but so much so with respect to the ordinary hue of the bark of trees, as to make it sufficiently indicative of the prevailing colour. The centre shafts of the tail of this bird terminate in long stiff spines, as stiff and as long as those of a horse-comb.