BIRDS OF ICELAND 69 



below the eye, and another behind it on the ear-coverts. 

 She closely resembles the female Longtail, and most 

 supposed occurrences in Britain of the Harlequin have 

 turned out, on examination, to have been those of the 

 Longtail. The bird gets its English name from the 

 bizarre but very handsome plumage of the drake. It 

 is an excellent bird for the table, surpassing in this 

 respect any duck with which I am acquainted, and I 

 regret to say that it is shot a good deal in the close 

 season by Icelanders. Like Barrow's Goldeneye it is 

 more a bird of the New than of the Old World, and is 

 found in the latter only in Iceland and north-eastern 

 Asia. 



Mr. How^ard Saunders {Manual of British Birds, 

 p. 446) states, on the authority of Mr. L. Belding, that 

 the food of the Harlequin consists in summer of ' insects,' 

 which is delightfully vague, more especially as a glance 

 at the Zoologist (1886, p. 153) would have gained in- 

 formation a trifle more precise. As the bird is so 

 unlike other ducks in its habits and habitat, it will be 

 worth while to specify that it haunts not only rapid 

 rivers, but the rapidest parts of them, and when feeding 

 is to be seen on the shingle beds, turning over the pebbles 

 on the water's edge, in just such places as an angler 

 would hunt for May-fly and stone-fly ' creepers.' And 

 for the same reason, the swallowed food at this season 

 is found to consist almost exclusively of larvae of 

 Eplumerce and Phri/ganidw, especially the former. 

 When disturbed, Harlequins seldom take wing, except 

 at very close quarters, but paddle down-stream through 



