Bulletin 3 - Peabody Museum of Natural History - Yale University

8 PEABODY MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORYthe upper breast in front of the wing; its posterior scapularshave much less white, and the bill lacks the orange, and the backand tail the gray color which characterize M. serrator; no evidenceof the elongated two-pointed crest exists; the black on theneck all round extends farther posteriorly on the hybrid, and theblack band along the back of neck is broader. Again, the redbreastedmerganser is a larger bird (508-635 mm.).Both positive and negative evidence, then, point to Lophodytescucullatus as one of the parents. As to the other parent, therecan be no doubt that it was either the American golden-eye(Bucephala clangula americana) or Barrow's golden-eye (B.islandica) ; all other ducks are excluded by their size or colorpattern, or both.Two characters of the hybrid favor B. clangula americana.First, the iridescence of the head and neck is distinctly greenrather than purple and violet. Secondly, the single black wingbar across the bases of the greater coverts is so narrow as tosuggest that, with L. cucullatus having two distinct bars acrossthe white wing patch, the other parent must have had less of abar than does B. islandica; B. c. americana has none. The differencesbetween the bills of the two species of Bucephala are notsufficiently great to be helpful in determining which had crossedwith such a long, shallow-billed bird as a merganser.Having settled upon Lophodytes cucullatus and Bucephalaclangula americana as the parents of this hybrid, one sees that itstands as an extraordinary intermediate between the two species.