POCHARD, 235 



much less prized in spring when deprived of it, and obliged 

 to feed entirely at sea ; so our Dun-birds are best while they 

 feed at the mouths of rivers, and about fresh-water, but when 

 they feed at sea on fishes, Crustacea, and mollusca, I have 

 found them coarse and ill flavoured. They feed principally 

 during the night. 



When these Ducks are not excited or alarmed, their note 

 is a low whistle, but at other times it is a rough croak. The 

 Dun-bird is not so slender and elegant in form as the Wild 

 Duck, and others of the first division, or more surface-feeding 

 Ducks, but are short in the body, and depressed in form, 

 swimming low in the water, and are observed to be bad 

 walkers on land, from the backward position of their legs ; 

 an arrangement of great service to them as swimmers and 

 divers. Rusticus, of Godalming, says that fifty or more have 

 been seen on the piece of water there called the Old Pond, in 

 company with Wild Ducks ; from which, however, they al- 

 ways separated on rising. Messrs. Sheppard and Whitear, in 

 their Norfolk Catalogue of Birds, mention, in 1825, that this 

 species breed at Seoul ton Mere ; and the Rev. Mr. Lubbock 

 sent me word that it has also bred there of late years. Mr. 

 Hewitson says a small number of the Pochard remain during 

 the summer months, and breed on the borders of the inland 

 meres, so numerous in many parts of Holland. The nest is 

 placed amongst the rushes, or other coarse herbage abounding 

 in those situations. The eggs vary in n\imber from ten to 

 twelve. The specimen figured in Mr. Hewitson's work on 

 the eggs of our British Birds, is of a bufFy-white colour, two 

 inches in length, and one inch and five-eighths in breadth. 

 M. Vieillot says this species appears in France at two periods 



the names of Valisyieria Americana^ Zostera 7narina, Grass-wrack, and Tluppia 

 maritima, Sea-grass, called also in America Eel-grass, from the form and 

 length of the stem. The Ducks dive and pull up these aquatic plants to ob- 

 tain tlie tender roots, the only parts they seem to eat. The two plants last 

 named are common near the coast in this country. 



