DIVING-DUCKS 363 



adult drake, among some coots, on January iSth, 1S90, 

 another being secured by a local fowler just five years 

 afterwards. 



The tufted duck I have never met with on the north- 

 east coast ; but during- the intensely severe frosts of 

 February, 1895, was informed that small "bunches " had 

 appeared among- the ice-bound slakes, two or three 

 being secured. Such an occurrence appears in no way 

 improbable, as tufted ducks frequent all the inland 

 waters at that season ; but it is singular that during 

 the many Arctic days I spent that winter on the coast, 

 I had not myself the luck to fall in with them. 



A beautiful, member of the family which the 

 wildfowler sees almost daily when afloat, is the red- 

 breasted merganser. Exquisitely graceful in form and 

 plumage, it is yet so wholly useless when killed, that 

 no professional fowler would waste a charge of powder 

 and shot over them. The mergansers are, nevertheless, 

 among the most timid, wild, and utterly inaccessible of 

 all the wild birds of the sea. So keen and alert is their 

 vision, and so hateful the human race, that thev will not, 

 wittingly, allow the presence of a punt on the same square 

 mile of sea as themselves ; it is, in fact, ludicrous to 

 observe the immense distances at which their almost 

 irrational timidity bids them decamp. Spending the 

 night at sea, they enter the estuaries at dawn, and 

 for the period of daylight set at naught all the arts 

 and stratagems of man ; to them indeed, and to the 

 golden-eyes, belongs alone of all their watchful tribe 

 the credit of outmanoeuvring and nullifying the most 

 elaborate devices of the enemy. They systematically 

 enter waters which are as free and as open to punts as 

 to themselves, remain there for their own purposes 



