3G4 BIRD-LIFE OF THE BORDERS 



all day, and leave again at night for the open sea, 

 without losing the number of their mess. Of course, in 

 punting year after year, a stray chance does turn up at 

 intervals to work in a successful shot : but as a rule 

 mergansers and golden-eyes are more than a match for 

 the most skilful fowler that ever went afloat. 



The only shots I have known at mergansers from 

 a gunning-punt have occurred when the birds have 

 been caught sunning themselves round some sharp 

 bend in a sand-bank — a mere lucky chance. The 

 habit is one that mergansers always indulge in at 

 midday, going ashore to dry and preen their feathers, 

 when a dozen or more may be seen basking together. 

 Other chance shots are obtained, should the birds be 

 cut off in some narrow ''gut," whither the punt has 

 crept up unobserved. But mergansers rarely make a 

 mistake or trust themselves in either danger-spot ; 

 while, should they find themselves hemmed in up a cul 

 de sac, they will rather attempt to dive back beneath 

 the boat than fly over "dryland" — or what mergansers 

 may regard as such. They feed entirely on shrimps and 

 small fish, and are quite uneatable. There are, however, 

 few more lovely birds than a newly-killed merganser 

 drake. As he lies on the fore-deck — the weird, half- 

 uncanny expression in his blood-red eye still undimmed ; 

 the slim, snake-like neck and glossy head, adorned with 

 its long double crest — one-half standing straight out back- 

 wards, like the "toppin" of a peewit, the other pointing 

 downwards towards the back {not pendent, as invariably 

 misrepresented in books) ; then the lovely but evanescent 

 salmon-hues which tinge his breast- — all these points, 

 together with the bold colours and brightly contrasted 

 plumage, combine to form an object of striking beauty. 



