The CjOlden iLye {Clangula clangula americana) 

 By Gerald Alan Abbott 



Length: About 19 inches. 



Range: North America; breeds Maine and British Provinces north. Win- 

 ters in Cuba and Mexico. 



Food : Mostly small shell and other fish, which it procures by diving. 



The Golden-eye, or "Whistler,"' and decidedly a deep water fowl, is a com- 

 mon winter resident on the Great Lakes and in the larger rivers. It occurs 

 from coast to coast, but the Barrow's golden-eye chiefly replaces this form from 

 the Rocky Mountains westward. A flock of golden-eye traveling with the wind 

 at eighty miles an hour produces a sound with their wings from which the bird 

 derives the name whistler. Feeding almost entirely on fish, they are not so good 

 eating as are most ducks. These birds are expert divers, and are sometimes 

 caught in nets which have been lowered into five fathoms of water. 



During the spring, the golden-eyes retreat to the timbered lakes, near which 

 each female selects a hollow tree, where eight to fourteen beautiful bluish green 

 eggs are deposited. The writer found ten eggs, fourteen feet from the ground, 

 in the hollow of an oak on a timbered peninsula, jutting out into Devil's Lake, 

 North Dakota. In passing I noticed little particles of down attached to the bark 

 above the cavity. Inspection disclosed the incubating bird which refused to 

 leave her treasures until touched. 



Of all wing-music, from the drowsy hum of the Ruby-throat to the startling 

 whirr of the Rufifed Grouse, I know of none so thrilling sweet as the whistling 

 wing-note of the Golden-eye. A pair of the birds have been frightened from the 

 water, and as they rise in rapid circles to gain a view of some distant goal, they 

 saw the air with vibrant whistling sounds. Owing to a difference in the wing- 

 beats between male and female, the brief moment when the wings strike in 

 unison with the effect of a single bird, is followed by an everchanging syncopa- 

 tion which challenges the waiting ear to tell if it does not hear a dozen birds 

 instead of only two. Again, in the dim twilight of early morning, while the 

 birds are moving from a remote and secure lodging place, to feed in some favor- 

 ite stretch of wild water, one guesses at their early industry from the sound 

 of multitudinous wings above contending with cold ether. 



The Golden-eye is a rather rare winter resident, but is better known as an 

 early spring and late fall migrant. It moves north with the Mallard and the 

 Green-winged Teal, and frequently does not retire in the fall until driven down 

 by closed waters. It is found chiefly about the most retired stretches of open 

 water or upon Lake Erie, and is exceedingly wary. The bird loves chilly waters 

 and dashing spray, and very much prefers the rock-bound shores of mountain 

 lochs, or the crunch and roar of icebergs to the milder companionship of sighing 

 sycamores and waving sedge. 



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