SHELD-DRAKE 835 
one of the most conspicuous birds of the Duck tribe, Anatidz, called, 
however, in many parts of England the “ Burrow-Duck” from its 
habits presently to be mentioned, and in some districts by the 
almost obsolete name of “Bergander” (Dutch, Berg-eende, Germ. 
Bergente), a word used by Turner in 1544. Other local names are 
SKEEL-DUCK and SKELDER. 
The Sheldrake is the Anas tadorna! of Linneus, and the 
Tadorna cornuia or T. vulpanser of modern ornithology, a bird some- 
what larger and of more upright stature than an ordinary Duck, 
having its bill, with a basal fleshy pro- 
tuberance (whence the specific term cornuta) 
pale red, the head and upper neck very 
dark glossy green, and beneath that a 
broad white collar, succeeded by a still 
broader belt of bright bay extending from 
the upper back across the upper breast. 
The outer scapulars, the primaries, a median 
abdominal stripe, which dilates at the vent, 
and a bar at the tip of the middle tail-quills are black; the inner 
secondaries and the lower tail-coverts are grey ; and the speculum 
or wing-spot is a rich bronzed-green. The rest of the plumage is 
pure white, and the legs are flesh-coloured. There is little external 
difference between the sexes, the female being only somewhat 
smaller and less brightly coloured. The Sheldrake frequents the 
sandy coasts of nearly the whole of Europe and North Africa, 
extending across Asia to India, China and Japan, generally keeping 
in pairs and sometimes penetrating to favourable inland localities. 
The nest is always made under cover, usually in a rabbit-hole 
among sandhills, and in the Frisian Islands the people supply this 
bird with artificial burrows, taking large toll of it in eggs and down. 
Barbary, south-eastern Europe and a large part of Asia are in- 
habited by an allied species of more inland 1 range and very different 
coloration, the T. casarca or Casarca* rutila of ornithologists, the 
TaporNna. (After Siahiean 
- Old Norsk name Skjéldungr, from Skjéldr, primarily a patch, and now 
commonly bestowed on a piebald horse, just as Skjalda (Cleasby’s cel. 
Dict, sub voce), from the same source, is a particoloured cow. But 
some scholars interpret Skjéldungr by the secondary meaning of Skjéldr, 
a shield, asserting that it refers to ‘‘the shield-like band across the breast” of 
the bird. Ifthey be right the proper spelling of the English word would be 
**Shield-drake,” as some indeed have it. A third suggested meaning, from 
the Old Norsk Skjél, shelter, is philologically to be rejected, but, if true, would 
refer to the bird’s habit, described in the text, of breeding under cover. 
1 This is the Latinized form of the French Tadorne, first published by Belon 
(1555), a word on which Littré throws no light except to state that it has a 
southern variant Tardone. 
* Bonaparte in 1838 separated this species from the genus Tadorna, but 
neither he nor his successors have shewn any good reason for doing so. 
