ANATIDAE IIQ 



being black except for the buff breast, white neck, upper back, 

 lesser wing-coverts, and a patch on each side of the rump. The 

 feet and the bill, with its vertical black-edged disc at the base, are 

 orange. The female is redder than in the Eider, with a more 

 feathered culmen. These species are essentially maritime, only 

 coming to shore to breed ; they are semi-gregarious, and form a 

 nest of grass and rubbish, a quantity of down underlying the five 

 to eight oily-green eggs. Eider-down is chiefly procured from 

 Iceland, Greenland, and protected islands in Norway. The flight 

 is low and heavy, the food consists of mussels, starfish, and other 

 sea creatures. Arctoncttci Jischeri, the Spectacled Eider of Alaska, 

 is chiefly white, with dark grey rump and under parts ; the head 

 being varied with green and decorated with pendent bristly plumes 

 on the occiput, stiff frontal and loral feathers, and a satin-like 

 (|uadrangular patch outlined with black on each side. The tail- 

 and wing-quills are brown, except the falcate inner secondaries ; 

 the feet are brownish, the bill is orange in the male. The female 

 is fulvous and black with bluish beak. Heniconetta stelleri breeds 

 on the Ai'ctic shores mainly lietween the Taimyr Peninsula and 

 Alaska, and has strayed to Britain and even France. The head, 

 falcate scapulars, and inner secondaries are white with blue-black 

 outer webs to the two latter, the rest of the wing-quills and tail 

 brown ; the back, throat, neck, and a spot on each side of the breast 

 purplish-black ; the lores and short occipital tuft green, the lower 

 parts mostly tawny. The female is brown with darker markings, 

 and duller wing- bar. Cauiptolaemus lahradorius, the extinct " Tied 

 Duck " of the North Atlantic coast of America, was black, with 

 white head, neck, chest, scapulars, and most of the wings except 

 the primaries ; it had a black stripe down the crown and stiff 

 cheek-feathers. The brownish female shewed a white speculum. 

 Oedemia nigra, the Scoter or Black Duck, which nests in North 

 Scotland, ranges over Northern Europe and Asia to the Taimyr 

 Peninsula, sometimes reaching the Azores and the Mediterranean 

 in winter. It is black, with a yellow nasal patch and a swollen 

 base to the culmen, the female being dark brown with greyish 

 face and throat, and no protuberance or yellow mark. Oe. 

 nmericana of North-East Asia and North America, migrating to 

 Japan, California, and New Jersey, has the knob yellow witli 

 red sides, while the female is grey-brown. Oe.fusca, the Velvet 

 Scoter, extends from Scandinavia to West Siberia, and occurs 



