28 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIRDS 



it at once, continually thrusting their bills into their 

 backs, still sailing slowly along back and forth offshore. 

 Sometimes they are in two or three straight lines. Now 

 they will all seem to be crossing the pond, but pre- 

 sently you see that they have tacked and are all head- 

 ing this way again. Among them, or near by, I at 

 length detect three or four whistlers, by their wanting 

 the red bill, being considerably smaller and less white, 

 having a white spot on the head, a black back, and 

 altogether less white, and also keeping more or less 

 apart and not diving when the rest do. Now one half 

 the sheldrakes sail off southward and suddenly go to 

 diving as with one consent. Seven or eight or the 

 whole of the party will be under water and lost at 

 once. In the meanwhile, coming up, they chase one 

 another, scooting over the surface and making the 

 water fly, sometimes three or four making a rush 

 toward one. 



The sheldrake has a peculiar long clipper look, often 

 moving rapidly straight forward over the water. It 

 sinks to very various depths in the water sometimes, 

 as when apparently alarmed, showing only its head 

 and neck and the upper part of its back, and at others, 

 when at ease, floating buoyantly on the surface, as if 

 it had taken in more air, showing all its white breast 

 and the white along its sides. Sometimes it lifts itself 

 up on the surface and flaps its wings, revealing its 

 whole rosaceous breast and its lower parts, and look- 

 ing in form like a penguin. When I first saw them 

 fly up-stream I suspected that they had gone to Fair 



