62 BIRDS OF ICELAND 



not contaminated by glaciers) swarm with small 

 mollusca, and it is these which give the trout and char 

 their red flesh and fine condition. 



X^ Clangula glaucion (Linn.). 



Common Goldeneye. 



Native name . ' Iliisond (' House-duck,' from its habit 

 of nesting in holes in the turf walls of farm 

 buildings). 



It was on June 23, 1885, when Mr. Thomas Carter 

 and I were riding amongst a number of small sheets 

 of water in the delta of the HeraSsvotn (SkagafjorSr) 

 that my eye fell on a pair of golden eyes in a pool. I 

 was wanting to take an interest in goldeneyes, having 

 then never seen Barrow's Goldeneye at large. They 

 allowed me to pass on horseback at about forty yards 

 distance. ]\Iy instant thought was that they were not 

 Barrow's Goldeneye at all, the drake having a circular, 

 and not crescent-shaped, white patch on the face. I 

 duly made a note of it that night and recorded it 

 (Zoologist, 1886, p. 1), and also requested my friend 

 Stephensson to look out for the bird and procure me 

 specimens, if possible. In the following winter he 

 sent me two drakes — one quite a young bird, with a 

 sooty head, the other adult — of G. glaucion. I never 

 saw it at Myvatn, and the duck-farmers there failed 

 to recognise a sketch of it, nor did any of the autho- 

 rities in Iceland appear to meet with it afterwards. 

 Grondal merely mentions in Skyrsla (p. 50) my record, 



