90 DUCKS AND GEESE. this subfamily are the Redhead, Canvasback, Scaup or Broadbill, Whistler, Bufflehead, Old Squaw, Eider, three species of Scoters or " Coots " and Ruddy Duck. These are all northern-breeding birds who visit the waters of our bays and coasts during their migrations or in the winter. The bill in both River and Bay Ducks has a series of gutters on either side which serve as strainers. The birds secure a large part of their food^ — of small mollusks, crustaceans, and seeds of aquatic plants — from the bot- tom, taking in with it a quantity of mud, which they get rid of by closing the bill and forcing it out through the strainers, the food being retained. Geese are more terrestrial than Ducks, and, though they feed under water by tipping, often visit the land to procure grass, corn, or cereals, which they readily nip off. The white-faced, black-necked Canada Goose is our only common species. Its long overland journeys, while migrating, render it familiar to many who have seen it only in the air. It migrates northward in March and April and returns in October and November, breeding from the Northern States northward and wintering from New Jersey southward. The two Swans, Whistling and Trumpeter, found in North America, are generally rare on the Atlantic coast. HEBONS, STORKS, IBISES, ETC. (ORDER HERODIONES.) Herons and Bitterns. (Family Ardeid^.) Of the seventy-five known members of this family fourteen inhabit eastern North America. Most of these are Southern in distribution, only six or seven species regularly visiting the Northern • States. Their large size
