Manual of the Game Birds of Itidia. 



quit their nesting holes, hence probably 

 the name of ' sly goose ' applied to this 

 species in some localities. The young 

 are sometimes carried in the bills of their 

 parents down to the sea. St. John, in 

 his ' Natural History and Sport in Moray ' 

 (p. 293), refers to the strange instinct 

 which enables the female, sitting on her 

 eggs many feet under ground, and more 

 or less distant from the sea, to know to a 

 moment when the tide begins to ebb, and 

 then and then only to betake herself to 

 the freshly exposed feeding grounds. 

 The males of this species vary much in 

 size, as may also the females, but the 

 latter are always smaller than the males 

 as well as less brilliant in colour ; but, 

 unhke the true Ducks, both sexes in the 

 genus Tadorna are alike in plumage, and 

 retain it when once fully acquired. The 

 flesh of the Sheldrake is coarse and 

 unpalatable, and its food consists, accord- 

 ing to Selby, of ' marine vegetables, 

 molluscous shell-fish, insects, etc. ; ' but so 

 minute are some of the forms of mollusca 

 which afford them a meal, and so great 

 their consumption, that Thompson, in 

 his ' Birds of Ireland ' (vol. iii. p. 69), 

 describes the crop and stomach of one of 

 these birds as containing by a careful 



