CHAPTER SIXTEEN WILD DUCKS 



which he had caught in a quiet pool, and which he seemed 

 to have some difficulty in swallowing. The bird was swim- 

 ming with the fish across his bill, and endeavouring to get 

 it in the right position, that is, with the head downwards. 

 At last, by a dexterous jerk, he contrived to toss the trout 

 up, and, catching it in his open mouth, managed to gulp it 

 down, though apparently the fish was very much larger in 

 circumference than the throat of the bird. The expanding 

 power of a heron's throat is also wonderfully great, and I 

 have seen it severely tested when the bird was engaged in 

 swallowing a flounder something wider than my hand. As 

 the flounder went down, the bird's throat was stretched 

 out into a fan-like shape, as he strained, apparently half- 

 choked, to swallow it. These fish-eatingbirds have no crop, 

 all they gulp down, however large it may be, goes at once 

 into their stomach, where it is quickly digested. Like the 

 heron, the cormorant swallows young water-fowl, rats, or 

 anything that comes in his way. 



There is a peculiarity in the bills of most birds which 

 live on worms or fish : they are all more or less provided 

 with a kind of teeth, which, sloping inwards, admit easily 

 of the ingress of their prey, but make it impossible for any- 

 thing to escape after it has once entered. In the goosander 

 andmerganserthisisparticularlyconspicuous, as their teeth 

 are so placed that they hold their slippery prey with the 

 greatest facility. Thecommon wild duck has it also, though 

 the teeth are not nearly so projecting or sharp; feeding as 

 it does on worms and insects, it does not require to be so 

 strongly armed in this respect as those birds that live on 

 fish. 

 215 



