2 12 CATALOGUE OF BIRDS. 



and eastward ; it ranges across Siberia to the Pacific 

 and visits Japan in winter. 



CASE 44. 



THE SHELD-DUCK. 



Order, Anseres. Family, Anatidcs. 

 This species is the most strikingly coloured of our 

 British Ducks. The prefix " Sheld " is explained 

 by Ray, (1674) as an East Anglian equivalent for 

 parti-coloured. This Duck is essentially marine in its 

 habitat, i.e., speaking generally, though I have 

 found them breeding on the shores of one of the 

 lochs in an island in the Hebrides. The nest is 

 invariably made in a rabbit hole, from three to ten 

 or twelve feet in. Sandhills, with long coarse grass, 

 honeycombed with rabbit warrens, especially if they 

 lie along a seacoast or estuary, are, perhaps, 

 the most favoured sites. The eggs, laid in May, 

 are of a creamy-white, generally ten to twelve in 

 number. Almost as soon as the young are out of 

 the nest they take to the water with their parents, 

 and often the mother carries them from the nest on her 

 back to the water's edofe. This evidence alone would 

 be sufficient to show what hardy youngsters they are, 

 and when they are launched on the water they seem 

 — although may be only a few days old — to dive and 

 swim as well as their parents. This species is fairly 

 distributed in the British Islands, is found princi- 

 pally on the east coast of England, also on some 



