350 THE BIRDS OF SUSSEX. 



wliat^ which floats to the surface from the mud. At night 

 the Wigeon comes in from the sea to the marshes, and 

 freshwater ditches and pools,, and the shrill whistle of the 

 wings and the cry of the bird may often be heard through- 

 out the night. The Wigeon generally goes northward to 

 breed, yet that it occasionally breeds in Sussex appears from 

 the following instance. The late Mr. C. Scrase Dickins, of 

 Coolhurstj near Horsham, informed me that, in the middle 

 of May 1854, he saw the old and young birds swimming 

 about in Birchin Bridge Pond, and that the nest was about 

 seventy or eighty yards from the water in the old copse, 

 between the Hammer Pond (so named from being one of those 

 which drove the machinery for breaking up the iron-stone 

 in former days) and Hawkins Pond, all three of which are 

 near Coolhurst, and that the nest was very similar to that 

 of the Wild Duck, with perhaps more down. He told me 

 also that they had a brood the summer before, but he did 

 not then know of the nest ; his keeper told him that they had 

 bred several times in the forest. Mr. Booth says that when 

 the drake Wigeon begins to whistle, the mandibles are 

 opened wide for several seconds. 



Mr. Selby was the first to discover the nest in Scotland, 

 which was on an island in Loch Laighal, well concealed 

 among rushes, and composed of their decayed stems, inter- 

 woven with a large quantity of the bird^s down. It breeds 

 abundantly in Norway and Lapland. 



POCHARD. 



Fuligula ferina . 



ThS most abundant of the diving Ducks, and the best of all 

 for the table, arrives on our coast about the middle of April, 



