PRELIMINARY CLASSIFIED NOTES 247 



the fruit of the hawthorn (Cratcegus), grass, and vegetable fibre. Animal food is 

 also largely eaten : small fishes, tadpoles and small frogs, fresh-water molluscs 

 (Pisidium fontinale), and various insects both in the larval and adult stages, such as 

 the larvae of PTiryganea and Ephemera (Jackel), and Dytiscus marginalia (Sachse). 

 In the Baltic Naumann found in winter chiefly small specimens of Turbo litoreus. 

 The young are tended by the duck, and though able to dive at a very early age, 

 subsist at first entirely on minute organisms picked up on the surface, and water- 

 plants brought up by the duck. [F. c. R. J.] 



6. Song Period. The courting-notes are only to be heard when the birds 

 are pairing in March. [F. c. R. J.] 



SCAUP [Nyroca marila (Linnaeus) ; Fuligula marila (Linnaeus). Blue-bill, 

 sea-wigeon, mussel-teal ; covie (Northumberland) ; frostyback-wigeon 

 (Sussex)]. 



1. Description. The scaup may readily be distinguished by the great 

 breadth of the beak and the white bar across the wing. The sexes differ in colora- 

 tion; the male undergoes a seasonal change of plumage. (PI. 162.) Length 19 in. 

 [482 mm.]. The male in full dress has the head, neck, fore-part of the back and 

 breast black, glossed with green ; the scapulars and interscapulars and flanks 

 white, coarsely vermiculated with grey ; while the breast and abdomen are white, 

 the lower back and under tail-coverts are black. Iris yellow, legs and toes lead 

 colour. The female may at once be distinguished by the broad blaze of white round 

 the base of the beak : the head and neck and upper part of the body are dark 

 brown, relieved on the scapulars and interscapulars with more or less conspicuous 

 vermiculations of grey on an obscurely defined white ground : the flanks are 

 vermiculated with grey and white, and the rest of the under parts are white. The 

 male in "eclipse" resembles the female. Immature birds are also like the female, 

 but the white band around the base of the beak is tinged with brown, and the grey 

 vermiculations on the back are but feebly developed : similarly, the white breast 

 feathers are obscured by a brown hue. The young in down are dark brown above, 

 [w. P. P.] 



2. Distribution. In the British Isles this species has only been recorded as 

 breeding on a few occasions in Scotland. In the Outer Hebrides nesting is said 

 to have taken place " south of the Sound of Harris " in 1897, 1898, 1899 (two pairs), 

 1900 (three pairs), probably in 1901, and certainly in 1902 (J. A. Harvie-Brown, 

 Annals Scot. Nat. Hist., 1902, p. 211) ; but the first thoroughly authenticated nest 



