192 BIEDS OF NORFOLK. 



larity at certain states of tlie tide. Many attempts 

 were made to slioot it from the beacli, but it constantly 

 kept just beyond gun shot. It stayed, I tliink, till the 

 middle of October, when it took its departure. On its 

 first arrival, before the close-time was ended, the bird is 

 said to have been very tame, but after it had been pelted 

 with stones by the boys from the beach, it kept at a safe 

 distance from the shingle.'^ 



SOMATERIA STELLERI (Pallas). f 



STELLER'S DUCK. 



The Norfolk and Norwich Museum possesses what 

 was for fifteen years the only known British-killed 

 specimen J of this beautiful arctic species — a male in 

 almost perfectly adult plumage, which was shot at 

 Caister, near Yarmouth, in February, 1830. The 

 " Norfolk Chronicle " of the 20tli of the same month, 

 contains a paragraph stating that " One of the greatest 



* Messrs. Paget record a female Somateria sj^ectalilis, ou the 

 authority of Mr. Lilly Wige:, as having been shot on Breydon, 

 July 25th, 1813. With regard to this supposed occurrence, Mr. 

 Stevenson, some years ago, favoured me with the following note : — 

 " It is singular that the common eider is not named in Paget's list, 

 and ' king eider ' may have been written by mistake. In the days 

 before Yarrell, I question if Wigg, or any one at Yarmouth, 

 would have recognised the female of the king eider as distinct 

 from the more common species." The Suffolk examples rest on 

 an equally shadowy foundation, and are now universally rejected. 



t Pallas being (in 1769) the first describer of this bird, the 

 specific name he gave it has to be adopted instead of dispar, sub- 

 sequently (in 1786) bestowed by Sparrman. It is curious that by 

 an accident, as noticed by Pallas himself ("Zoogr. Rosso-Asiat.," 

 ii., p. 239), the plate accompanying his original description did 

 not represent this species, though it has been commonly cited as 

 doing so. The name " Western Duck," by which, under the mis- 

 taken impression that the bird was peculiar to Bering's Sea, it 

 has also been known, has, of late years, been generally and advan- 

 tageously dropped. 



J A second example, and the only other known to have been 

 obtained in the British Islands, was shot 15th August, 1815 

 (" Zoologist," 1846, p. 1249), at Filey, in Yorkshire. 



