156 TALKS ABOUT BIRDS 



ments ; one is that the feet strike very much 

 outwards as well as backwards, and another 

 is that the effort of the bird is all to keep itself 

 down, for when it wants to come up it has 

 only to stop paddling back and up it comes 

 like a cork. You can see, too, how, like other 

 ducklings, the young of these diving ducks 

 are active at once and start on their career as 

 divers, and very funny it looks to see a brood 

 of these little downy things all diving " on 

 their own " ; if the brood is a large one it is 

 quite hard to count them, for there are always 

 some down and some up. There are a good 

 many kinds of ducks which make a speciality 

 of diving, the most celebrated being the 

 eider-duck which furnishes the valuable down 

 for quilts ; this is a sea-duck, and one of the 

 deepest divers of all sea-birds. 



There are some diving ducks which have 

 even gone into the fishing divers' line of 

 business, and chase and catch fish under 

 water ; these are called mergansers or saw- 

 bills, and one of them, the red-breasted 

 merganser, is quite common on the Scottish 

 and Irish lakes. These fishing ducks are 

 nearly as greedy as cormorants, and their 



