LONG-TAILED DUCK 



;25 



plumage dark brown, with broad rufous edges and dark middles to 

 the scapulars and secondaries. There is, however, no hard-and-fast 

 line between the breeding and non-breeding dresses, which arc con- 

 nected by insensible gradations. In the duck the prevailing tone is 

 dark brown above and white below, but there is a white stripe above the 

 eye, the neck is white on the sides, and the cheeks and upper portion 

 of the breast are ashy brown. Young birds of both sexes are like the 

 female ; and the duckling is dark brown above, with a light ring at 

 the base of the beak and a similar ring round the eye, and greyish 

 white beneath. The length of the drake, to the tips of the long 



HE ROWLAND WARD STUDIOS 



LONG-TAILED DLXK (MALE) 



middle tail-feathers, is 22 inches, but its weight is only i^ lbs. or 

 an ounce or so more. 



Breeding throughout the Arctic regions of both hemispheres, the 

 long-tailed duck wanders as far south in winter as the northern coast 

 of the Mediterranean, the Caspian sea, and China and Japan. To the 

 British Islands it is a winter-visitor, more abundant in the Hebrides 

 and the north of Scotland than farther south, and in England less 

 un frequent on the eastern than on the opposite coast. iVpparently the 

 only evidence of its having ever laid in the British Islands rests on a 

 pair of eggs obtained in Shetland as those of the calloo, by which name 

 the bird is known in those remote isles. In the Faroes, however, it 

 probably nests not unfrequently, while Iceland is one of its regular 

 breeding -places. Immature birds, which in neither sex develop the 

 long middle tail-feathers of the adult drake, are not uncommonly 



