The stiff-tailed Ducks. 2>^ 



" Presently the binocular rested on six 

 of the most extraordinary wild-fowl we 

 ever met with — gambolling and splashing 

 about on the water, chasing each other, 

 now above now beneath its surface like a 

 school of porpoises ; they appeared half 

 birds, half water-tortoises, with which the 

 lagoon abounds. We were well sheltered 

 by a fringe of sedges, and presently the 

 strangers entered a small reed-margined 

 bight, swimming very deep, only their 

 turtle-shaped backs and heavy heads in 

 sight. Here we crept down on them, 

 and as they sat, splashing and preening 

 in the shallow water, stopped three — two 

 dead, the third escaping, winged. They 

 proved to be a duck and drake of the 

 White-fronted Duck, Erismatura inersa — 

 heavily built diving-ducks, round in the 

 back, broad and flat in the chest, with 

 small wings like a Grebe, and long, stiff 

 tails like a Cormorant — the latter, being 

 carried under water as a rudder, is not 

 visible when the bird is swimming. The 

 enormously swollen bill of the drake — 

 pale waxen blue in colour — completed 

 as singular a picture of a feathered fowl 

 as the writer ever came across : they 

 were, in fact, no less remarkable in form 

 and colour, now we had them in hand. 



