SEA-DUCKS 373 



Another handsome bird which spends the winter with 

 us is the long-tailed duck. This also gets its living by 

 diving, but in a different manner to the two species just 

 described, whose food, as stated, consists of shell-fish, with 

 their spawn, of kinds which restrict them to places where 

 the bottom is rocky and of no great depth. Hence 

 eiders and scaups are usually met with close inshore, or, 

 if found diving at a distance from land, the fact will be ex- 

 plained by the existence of a submarine reef, and in no case 

 do they dive where the depth exceeds, perhaps, two or three 

 fathoms. Their food is exclusively on the sea-bottom or 

 among the algas that grow thereon ; but that of the long- 

 tail is in mid-ivater ; that is to say, the latter bird does 

 not require to reach the bottom at all, its food consisting 

 of animalcule and other minute creatures which swim at 

 all depths. Hence the long-tails, and, in a less degree, 

 the scoters, are able, like guillemots and razor-bills, to 

 live in sea of any depth, and can often be seen busily 

 diving several miles out from land. On examining one 

 of these ducks when newly-killed, it is impossible not to 

 be struck with the difference in the form of their small bills 

 when compared with those of the rest of the sea-diving 

 ducks. The latter are heavy and swollen organs, broaden- 

 ing out towards the tip — regular shovels in fact. The 

 bill of the long-tail, on the contrary, is small, narrow, and 

 delicate, tapering to the tip, but strongly pectinated, 

 or furnished with a comb-like process expressly designed 

 for sifting animalcule from the sea- water, but not for catch- 

 ing crabs and other crustaceans, as the rest of the sea- 

 ducks do. At the same time, these ducks are often to be 

 seen diving in quite shallow water near the shore, where 

 they feed on spawn and the minutest forms of marine life. 

 At one point on this coast, where the depth rarely exceeds 



