44 DIVERS—COLD-WEATHER DIVERS. 
birds which do not join the flights, making it one 
ot the widest breeders of the duck family. 
It is a timber bird, frequenting wood-lined streams 
and lakes; in the South it frequently raises two broods 
during the season, nesting like the woodducks and 
whistlers in hollow trees rocks etc., near the water. 
It feeds in the running streams, on lakes, bayous and 
ponds. The playing and roosting grounds are in the 
bushy edges of lakes, rivers and ponds, bayous, etc. 
The clutch is from eight to twelve white eggs, some- 
times blotched with brown. Length 18.00; wing 7.50; 
tarsus 1.25; extent 25.00; middle toe 1.85. 
Genus Somaterta—SuBGENUS Somateria. 
Somateria dresscrimAMERICAN Erer.—Habitat.— 
Atlantic Coast, northward from Maine to farthest is- 
lands; south to 42° in winter, occasionally. 
Little is known in the interior of this valuable duck, 
which differs slightly from the eider duck common in 
Iceland and on the Arctic shores, where its down with 
that of Clangula hyemalis forms a regular source of 
commerce with the inhabitants. The quantity of down 
in one nest is said to weigh about half a pound, which 
is, however, reduced to four ounces in the process of 
cleaning. The down taken from the nest, plucked by 
the duck from her own breast, is much superior to 
that taken from a dead body. It is said that the drake 
furnishes a second supply if the nest be robbed and 
the duck is unable to afford it, easily recognized by 
being whiter than that from the duck. They build on 
small islands rather than on large ones or the main- 
land, which affords better security from the intrusion 
