Back, breast, scapulars and flanks, dusky brown, marked with undulating white lines: speculum white.

A. Strepera, Temm. Man. d'Orn. torn. ii. p. 837. Gadwall, Mont. Orn. Diet. Bew. Brit. Birds, vol. II. p. 348. Common Gadwall, Selb. Illust. vol. ii. p. 301. pl. 51, & pl. 49*. f. 1. Gould, Europ. Birds, part viii. (Trachea,) Linn. Trans, vol. iv. pl. 13. f. 7, & 8.

Dimensions

Entire length twenty inches: length of the bill (from the forehead) one inch nine lines, (from the gape) two inches; of the tarsus one inch six lines; of the tail three inches five lines; from the carpus to the end of the wing ten inches seven lines.

Description

(Male). Head and neck grayish white, speckled with brown; lower part of the neck, breast, and back, clove-brown, marked with crescent-shaped white lines; scapulars and flanks undulated with white and blackish brown; middle wing-coverts chestnut-brown; greater coverts, rump, and upper and under tail-coverts, black, glossed with purplish blue: speculum white: belly and abdomen white, minutely speckled with grayish brown: tail cinereous, edged with white: bill brownish black, pale beneath: legs orange. (Female). Not very dissimilar to the male, but with the undulating lines and crescent-shaped bars less distinctly marked. (Young of the year). "Of a uniform rusty brown above, each feather having a central mark of dusky black; the under surface white." Gould. (Egg). "Greenish ash-colour." Temm.

A winter visitant, but not of very common occurrence. According to Temminck, is very abundant in Holland, frequenting the same situations as the common Wild Duck. Breeds in marshes, and lays eight or nine eggs. Food, fish, and aquatic insects and vegetables.

(3. Dafila, Leach).