RUDDY SHELD-DUCK 89 
buff; patch in front and below the eye, throat, breast and 
abdomen, white; top of back and _ scapulars, brownish ; 
wing-coverts, chiefly white, with a little green on the 
speculum ; primaries, blackish ; upper surface of tail- 
feathers, chiefly brownish, except the outer ones, which 
are pure white. 
Beak. Rich red; knob at the base same colour; this 
knob is absent in the female. 
FEET. Warm flesh-colour. 
IRIDEs. Brown. 
AVERAGE MEASUREMENTS. 
TOTAL LENGTH sym |ahllate 
WING les aan a 
BEAK fe Digs anes 
TARSO-METATARSUS Dee 
Kee OT >< aeO am, 
RUDDY SHELD-DUCK. Zadorna casarca (Linneus). 
Coloured Figures —Gould, ‘Birds of Great Britain,’ vol. v, 
pl. 12; Dresser, ‘Birds of Europe,’ vol. vi, pl. 421; 
Lilford, ‘ Coloured Figures,’ vol. vii, pl. 31. 
A remarkable immigration of Ruddy Sheld-Ducks to the 
British Isles, comparable to the spasmodic visits or 
‘arruptions’ of Pallas’s Sand-grouse, took place in 1892." 
Previous to that date, this Duck had been seldom obtained, 
most of the so-called British-taken specimens being escaped 
captives from aquatic preserves. The first recorded bird 
lulled in our Isles came from Blandford, in Dorset, in 1776. 
It is preserved in the Newcastle Museum (Saunders). The 
Ruddy Sheld-Duck, being a south-eastern species, rarely 
reaches our shores on migration ; according to Mr. Saunders 
“it is almost unknown to the north of the Alps and Car- 
pathians.”’ Not exclusively marine in its habits, it often 
' The reader is referred to a most interesting account of the migration 
of numbers of Ruddy Sheld-Ducks to the British Isles, written by Mr. 
Ogilvie, and published in the ‘Zoologist’ for 1892. Myr. Ussher, in 
the ‘ Birds of Ireland,’ gives a detailed list of the immigration to that 
country in 1892, 
