45G THE DIVERS 



with danger, while the female came only occasionally and left again at 

 once, in this respect resembling the Limicola3 ; l and Mr. E. Selous' 

 observations tend to show that the young are fed only at long 

 intervals, sometimes as much as seven and a half hours at a time. 2 

 There is a very remarkable observation in a paper by Mr. H. Blake 

 Knox in the Zoologist for 1865. He states that on a bright still day in 

 October, while at anchor in twelve feet of water, and having hooked 

 some small dabs, he noticed that the others suddenly scuttled off in 

 all directions, while the three hooked fish burrowed flat into the sand, 

 leaving only the top of the back visible. Suddenly a redthroated- 

 diver appeared above them and poised itself for a moment ; then 

 turning over on its back with its head underneath where its feet had 

 been before, it thrust the upper mandible under a fish and then 

 secured it, performing a similar action with a second, and snapping 

 the hooks with a jerk. 3 To this habit Mr. Knox attributes the worn 

 appearance of the top of the upper mandible in this species and the 

 great northern-diver. Dr. Edmonston supposed that this was due 

 to the bird ploughing up the sand with its bill in order to dislodge the 

 fish and worms concealed in it. 4 In a subsequent paper Mr. Blake 

 Knox states that each fish as caught is brought to the surface and 

 killed by repeated snaps, shakes, lettings go and catchings again, the 

 bird showing the greatest anxiety when the fish displayed any sign of 

 life. Each fish took five to ten minutes to manipulate before being 

 swallowed, and Mr. Bolam also says that though small flounders are 

 easily swallowed, a fish four or five inches across is bitten and pinched 

 in all directions, and five to ten minutes are spent before the fish is 

 allowed to pass down the gullet. The hooked fish, about which 

 Mr. Blake Knox writes, must have been very small to have been 

 swallowed at once under water. It is a voracious eater, and 

 Mr. A. Patterson states that forty-two fish, the largest seven inches 

 long, have been taken from the crop of a single bird ! Like all the 



1 Three Summers in Russian Lapland, p. 33. 



2 E. Selous, Zoologist, 1012, pp. 81, 210. 



3 Zoologist, 18(55, p. 9614. 4 Tom. tit., p. 9524. 



