BIRDS OF ESSEX COUNTY. 119 



that were not in full adult male plumage. Mr. Brewster tells me that in Florida 

 in the winter he has seen great flocks of young and females, so it is not only 

 in the human species that the male braves the hardships of the North while 

 the wife and children enjoy themselves in the sunny South. 



The females and young return towards spring, and by the end of March, 

 perhaps earlier, the love-season begins, and there is much coquetry on the cold 

 ocean. Although this species prefers the salt water, it visits the rivers and 

 ponds during the migrations, but less commonly than the Goosander. Dr. J. C. 

 Phillips has shot it at Wenham Lake from October 18th to December 16th. 

 It is very fond of the salt-water creeks and basins in the salt marshes, but with 

 the introduction and great increase of naphtha launches — " sea-skunks " as 

 they are appropriately called — during the last three years, the Shelldrake have 

 been driven outside more and more. The herring fisheries which are now 

 carried on by these naphtha boats in the fall in the waters of the Essex, 

 Ipswich, and Plum Island Rivers, are especially effective in this result. The 

 birds collect outside in huge flocks, and I have several times estimated these to 

 contain at least 500 individuals. On December 6th, 1903, Dr. Phillips found a 

 flock bedded off the southern end of Plum Island to the number of two or three 

 thousand. 



One may spend many delightful hours watching a flock of these birds 

 sporting off the beach in the waves. If they get within the line of breakers 

 they dive before the advancing foam, appearing again on the other side. In 

 diving, they often leap clear of the water, making a graceful curve, with their 

 wings cleaving close to their sides. At other times this leap is much curtailed, 

 or they sink beneath the surface without apparent effort, and when pursued I 

 have seen them put their bill only above the surface for air, to sink again out of 

 sight. In all these arts they resemble the Grebes. Young birds, sometimes at 

 least, do not dive. On the coast of Maine I have chased with a boat nearly 

 full-grown young Red-breasted Mergansers into a cove, and they have not 

 attempted to escape by diving. At other times I have seen the same birds 

 diving. 



Red-breasted Mergansers often swim along rapidly with head and neck 

 stretched to the full capacity half in the water in front of them, skimming and 

 apparently straining the water for food. They often put all of the head but the 

 top of the crest into the water, as if looking for fish, and at these times they are 

 constantly diving. 



Rising from the water is always a laborious process, especially in calm 

 weather. They flap along for some distance before they can clear the surface, 

 and the noise made by a flock near at hand is very startling if unexpected. I 

 have already spoken (see page 23) of a pair roused from the beach on a calm 



