The eggs of this species vary in number from four to seven, complements of fives and sixes being oftener found than any other. In one case a set of three was found by a friend of the writer's, but this was probably exceptional in its character. The ground-color is never fixed, but passes from a beautiful white, through a dark cream, into one that is decidedly buff. In some specimens, under a glass of moderate power, the ground is a perfectly uniform buff, but in others which appear to the unaided vision of the same color, the lens reveals a whitish background very densely covered with minute dottings. There is also noticeable considerable variation in the markings. Three from a nest in Philadelphia, with a pure-white ground-color, are marked with dottings and blotches of light-brown, sparsely scattered over the greater portion of their surfaces, excepting a space of the size of a dime about either extremity, where a dark and almost continuous patch of reddish-brown occurs, relieved by a few small spots of blackish-brown. These eggs are nearly spherical, of the ordinary shape, and have an average measurement of 1.38 by 1.14 inches. Another set, four in number, from near Germantown, Pa., have a light-buff ground, and are completely covered with fine markings of brown, and others of bolder spots of the same, so as almost to conceal the color below. They average the same in dimensions as the preceding, and are similarly shaped. A clutch of five from Granville, N. Y., is the exact counterpart of the Germantown specimens in every particular. All eggs which we have seen from New England, the South, and the West, California in particular, though subject to variations in size and ornamentation, are uniform as to shape. The length usually varies from 1.32 to 1.49, and the width from 1.07 to 1.20 inches.
[Original Size]
Plate XXI.—AIX SPONSA, (Linn.) Boie.—Wood Duck; Summer Duck.
The Wood Duck, appropriately so named because it breeds in trees, surpasses in elegance of plumage and gracefulness of action all North American birds of its family. Although known by the name of Summer Duck, from the fact of its remaining with us during the entire hot season, and not journeying to the cold regions of the North as many of its brethren are wont to do, it is however more commonly designated by the former appellation. Few species are more highly esteemed by lovers of the beautiful in Nature than this, and, where obtainable, it is one of the first that finds its way into the private collection of the amateur naturalist. But by epicures, it is considered as of rather inferior standing, lacking the delicacy of flesh which makes the Green-winged Teal and others of such immense gastronomic value.
Although truly an American species, it is more generally found throughout the United States than any other, nesting wherever suitable localities present themselves. North of the Potomac, and in the various States situated above the parallel which cuts its head-waters, at least so far as the country east of the Rocky Mountains is concerned, it is chiefly a migrant, arriving towards the latter part of March, or the beginning of April. South of this line, from Maryland to Florida, and in a southwesterly direction through the Gulf States into Mexico, the birds are found in more or less abundance during the entire year.
In the South Atlantic and Gulf States, they generally pair, we are told, about the first of March, but in New England and the Middle States, in favorable seasons, from the first to the fifteenth of April, perhaps later; and in the country bordering on the Great Lakes, about the last of May or the beginning of June. In Iowa, and other Western States of the same latitude, from the fifteenth to the last of May.
Upon its arrival in our Northern States, remarkable to say, unlike many of its numerous family connections, it seldom frequents the seashore, or the adjoining salt marshes, but manifests a predilection for the ponds, mill-dams, and deep muddy streams of the interior. The same is true of its more southern breeding-grounds along creeks and bayous of the land where the orange and palmetto charm the eye with perennial verdure.