220 



BIRD-LIFE OF THE BORDERS. 



shooters. There is no assignable reason for their with- 

 drawal, but whatever the cause may be, the fact remains that 

 at the present day the Pochard is now all but unknown. A 

 chance straggler may now and then turn up in August, or 

 while on migration, and a few years back I heard of two or 

 three being obtained by flight-shooters in winter, but I have 

 only once myself met with this duck on the N.E. coast. 

 This was in January, during severe frost. It formed one of 

 a little bunch of about a dozen ducks which were sitting on 

 the point of a sandspit. AYe were in the act of " setting up " 

 to them, when another gunner, concealed from our view by 

 an intervening sand-bank, fired and killed six of them. Five 

 were Scaups, and the sixth a Pochard in immature plumage. 



ME1{(;A^■^^ER DRAKE, showing fomi and carriage of Crest. 



The Tufted Duck I have never met with on the north- 

 east coast. 



Another interesting and beautiful member of the duck 

 genus which the wildfowler sees almost daily when afloat, 

 is the Eed-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 ^lergansers are, nevertheless, 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 they will not, wittingly, allow the 

 presence of a punt on the same square mile of sea as them- 



