140 BRITAIN'S BIRDS AND THEIR NESTS. 



of the more southern districts. There are also occasional 

 records from England, and doubtful ones from Ireland. 

 The seven to ten cream-tinted eggs are laid in a nest 

 placed among rushes or heather, and lined with dark- 

 coloured down from the bird itself. That our native- 

 breeding birds are to some extent migratory is shown 

 by the fact that a Wigeon duckling 'ringed' in Suther- 

 landshire was taken early in the following September in a 

 duck-decoy in north-eastern Holland. 



THE TUFTED=DUCK 



(Fuligula cristata). 



Plate 46. 



We now come to treat of a genus of Ducks which is 

 characterised, among other features, by the general colour- 

 scheme of the plumage. All the three species that we 

 have to deal with have the throat and breast conspicuously 

 dark, and the under-parts gray or dull white. The sharp 

 division between the coloration of breast and under-parts 

 is specially noticeable when the birds are flying over the 

 observer. 



Of the three species, all of them familiar in winter, the 

 Tufted-Duck is the only one which is sufficiently common 

 as a British-breeding bird to require full treatment. It 

 derives its name from the elongated feathers drooping 

 down the back of the neck ; but, as they are more often 

 than not plastered close to the rest of the plumage, 

 the trait is of little importance for identification. The 

 drake in full plumage, however, is always an unmistakable 

 bird apart from this. On the water he is specially easy to 

 recognise, as he swims high enough to display an ample and 

 conspicuous patch of gleaming white flank, which makes a 



