GOOSANDER.— RED-BKEASTED MERGANSER. 303 



' History of Harting/ includes it in the list of birds occurring 

 in that parish in severe winters. Mr. Booth states that 

 twenty-five years ago_, at Pagham^ and more lately at Rye 

 and Shoreham^ he has met with this species. They arc now 

 less plentiful about the Sussex harbours than on the East 

 coast. Mr. Dennis informed me that a fine male Goosander 

 was brought to him^ killed near Seaford^ in January 1850 ; 

 another (sex not mentioned), on the 17th of the same 

 month ; and a third, shot in very severe weather, in December 

 1856. Mr. Jeffery (p. n.) states that a male Goosander was 

 shot at Bird-ham, in January 1868, which passed into the 

 Chichester Museum. Gne is mentioned, as procured near 

 St. Leonards-on-Sea, in February 1880, in the 'Field' 

 newspaper. Mr. Anthony Ralph Biddulph, of Burton Park, 

 has been good enough to inform me that he killed two speci- 

 mens of the Goosander on the lake there at one shot, but 

 that he never heard of the Hooded Merganser there, so that 

 the report alluded to by the Editor of Yarrell's B.B. (vol. iv. 

 p. 510) was a mistake. 



RED-BREASTED MERGANSER. 



Mergus serrator. 



Although this species is not very common, it is more fre- 

 quently met with than the last, especially females and im- 

 mature birds, and is not so much addicted to fresh water, 

 though, as far as the tide runs up our rivers, it may occasion- 

 ally be found in them. Like the Goosander, it feeds exclu- 

 sively on fish, of which, when wounded, it will sometimes 

 disgorge a large number. It does not place its nest in hol- 

 lows of trees, but on the ground, generally among heather, 

 or under the shelter of thick bushes ; in the South of England 



