264 ai-len's naturalist's library. 



Eaiige in Great Britain. — The Ruddy Shelcl-Duck has occurred 

 in all three kingdoms, but can only be considered a rare and 

 occasional visitor, while some of the records of its capture 

 are doubtless founded on escaped specimens, as the bird is 

 frequently kept in confinement in this country. In 1892, 

 however, there was a large immigration of wild birds, and a 

 very interesting record of the visit of the Ruddy Sheld-Duck 

 to Great Britain in the summer of 1892 has been published by 

 Mr. F. Menteith Ogilvie in the " Zoologist " for that year (pp. 

 392-398). Flocks consisting of as many as ten to fourteen 

 birds, in one instance twenty, w^ere observed between the 

 middle of June and the middle of September, and there were 

 probably many others. Mr. Ogilvie surmises that it was from 

 the South Russian habitat of the species that the immigra- 

 tion occurred. " Those that visited this country, being non- 

 breeders, who probably accompanied the older birds on their 

 northern journey in the spring, were driven away by them from 

 the breeding-grounds, lost their bearings, and, crossing Russia 

 and the North Sea, found themselves on our inhospitable 

 shores." Mr. Ogilvie, however, notices that in every specimen 

 killed, the inner secondaries were extremely worn, which looks 

 as if the birds had nested, and seeing that the Ruddy Sheld- 

 Duck is rather an early breeder, with the young swimming 

 about on the 30th of May (cf. Seebohm, Brit. B. iii. p. 524), 

 there is nothing to prevent the British specimens, at the end 

 of June, from being birds which had bred in South-eastern 

 Europe, and migrated north-west instead of south. 



Range outside the British Islands. — In Asia the Ruddy Sheld- 

 Duck breeds as far north as the Common Sheld-Duck, but in 

 Europe it is a bird of the Mediterranean Sub-region, extend- 

 ing eastwards to Southern and Eastern Siberia, and Mongolia. 

 In winter it visits Northern Africa, India, and China. 



Habits. — However gregarious this species may be in winter, 

 the observations of naturalists tend to prove that, during the 

 breeding-season, it is only found in isolated pairs, usually 

 selecting holes of cliffs as its nesting-site, and often at a great 

 height. Thus the species has been found breeding in Ladak 

 and Tibet, at an elevation of 13,000 to 16,000 feet above 

 the sea. The young birds are tended with great care by the 



