356 SWIMMERS. 



this species for its frigid natal climes and their icy barriers 

 that it is seen to linger in the north as long as the existence of 

 any open water can be ascertained. \Vhen the critical moment 

 of departure at length approaches, common wants and general 

 feeling begin so far to prevail as to unite the scattered families 

 into numerous flocks. They now proceed towards the South, 

 and making a halt on the shores and inland lakes round Hud- 

 son Bay, remain until again reluctantly driven towards milder 

 climes. They are the last birds of passage that take leave 

 of the fur countries. Familiar with cold, and only driven to 

 migrate for food in the latter end of August, when already a 

 thin crust of ice is seen forming in the night over the still sur- 

 face of the Arctic Sea, the female Harelda is observed inge- 

 niously breaking a way with her wings for the egress of her 

 young brood. 



According to the state of the weather we consequently ob- 

 serve the variable arrival of these birds. In October they 

 generally pay us a visit, the old already clad in the more daz- 

 zling garb of winter. The young sometimes seek out the 

 shelter of the freshwater ponds, but the old keep out at sea. 

 No place in the Union so abounds with these gabblers as the 

 Bay of Chesapeake. They are lively, restless, and gregarious 

 in all their movements, and fly, dive, and swim with unrivalled 

 dexterity, and subsist chiefly upon small shell-fish and marine 

 plants, particularly the Zostera, or grass-wrack. Late in the 

 evening or early in the morning, towards spring more particu- 

 larly, vast flocks are seen in the bays and sheltered inlets, and 

 in calm and foggy weather we hear the loud and blended 

 nasal call reiterated for hours from the motley multitude. 

 There is something in the sound like the honk of the Goose, 

 and as far as words can express a subject so uncouth, it 

 resembles the guttural syllables 'ogh ough egh, and then ^ogh 

 ogh ogh ough egh, given in a ludicrous drawling tone ; but still, 

 with all the accompaniments of scene and season, this humble 

 harbinger of spring, obeying the feelings of nature and pouring 

 forth his final ditty before his departure to the distant North, 

 conspires, together with the novelty of his call, to please rather 



