BLACK SCOTER 343 



Genus GEDEMIA, Fleming. 



BLACK 8C0TEE. 



(Edemia nigra (Linnffius). /S'.A^., i., p. 196 (1766). 



This Scoter is more or less numerous on the coast and 

 in the estuaries of Kent during winter. 



Boys adds it to the Birds of Sandwich, 1792. The 

 Rev. J. Pemberton Bartlett, in 1844, says it is "common 

 in Eomney Marsh." There is a young bird in the British 

 Museum, obtained at Hythe, by H. J. Ehnes, Esq. The 

 Eev. B. Austen notes it at Wahiaer; Mr. G. Dowker at 

 Stourmouth. Mr. J. Gould, in the Birds of Great Britain, 

 states : " In the winter season we can scarcely take 

 a trip from Dover to Calais, or from Folkestone to 

 Boulogne, without the vessel steaming through little 

 knots of the Scoter ; while from the deck strings of forty 

 or more may frequently be seen passing to and fro 

 from one part of their feeding grounds to another. 

 Mr. Dann has seen flocks off Dungeness as late as the 

 middle of June." 



In the Maidstone Museum there is a male obtained at 

 Lydd, January 17, 1883, by Mr. H. Kennard, also a 

 specimen that w^as shot on the Medway as high up as 

 Tovil, which is above Maidstone; another, a female, from 

 Gillingham, Kent, October 4, 1894, by Mr. H. Payne ; 

 and three males and two females procured on the lower 

 Medway by Mr. R. J. Balston. 



Mr. J. H. Gurney, writing in the Zoologist, 1894, says : 

 " My remarks on the partial assumption by female birds 

 of male plumage {Zoologist, 1894, p. 15) has elicited from 

 the Rev. H. A. Macpherson a very interesting corre- 

 spondence, in which he mentions a female Sector, (Edemia 



