104 BRITISH BIRDS. WITH THEIR NESTS AND EGGS. 



of the genus Bucchntm. The late Mr. Thompson opened the stomachs of ten shot 

 in Belfast Bay, and took from one of them nine thousand specimens of Skcnea 

 dcpressa and Moiitactita purpurea, and about eleven thousand others, making a total 

 of twenty thousand shells in the crop and stomach of a single SIidd-Duck. Mr. St. 

 John says : " its food appears to consist almost wholly of small shell-fish, and 

 more especially of cockles, which it swallows whole. It extracts these latter from 

 the sand by paddling or stamping with both its feet ; this brings the cockle quickly 

 to the surface. I have often seen the tame birds of this species do the same in 

 the poultry yard when impatient for or waiting for their food." 



The Sheld-Duck is heavier and stands higher than the Mallard, and it is 

 much more a Goose in manner than a Duck having an erect carriage and light 

 active step, instead of waddle : their flight, too, more resembles that of Geese and 

 Swans. The young are so active that it is almost impossible to catch them. In 

 winter, not unfrequently, great numbers visit the Lincolnshire coast, particularly 

 in those seasons when a grain ship is wrecked and broken up on some of the out- 

 lying sand banks, at which time Ducks congregate in large numbers from all 

 parts to the feast. I have, at this season, known flocks of two to three hundred 

 Sheld- Ducks to be seen off the coast. 



With us the " Shell "-Duck is in all seasons of the year inseparably connected 

 with one of its most favourite haunts, the dreary flat coast of Lincolnshire, 

 where the sea, at ebb of spring tides, recedes for miles, and is scarcely visible 

 from the dune except by a far-away glimmer along the horizon, or, if there 

 is any breeze, by that long chequered line of black and white, like the squares 

 of a chess-board, rising and falling alternately, in almost rhythmical pulsations, 

 as the breakers on the sand-banks flash into light or recoil into deep shadow. 



"A coast 



Of ever-shifting sand, and far away 

 The phantom circle of a moaning sea." 



The great beauty of this bird is no indication of its merits in a culinary 

 sense, it might possibly, when well fed with poultry, be a prize for an epicure, 

 but the wild bird, being a mud feeder, cannot be recommended from a gastronomic 

 point of view ; the flesh is bitter and distasteful. 



In the north Frisian Islands, the Sheld-Duck nests in a semi-domesticated 

 state. Mr. H. Danford ("The Ibis," 1874, p. 403) says: "The natives make 

 artificial burrows in the sand-hillocks, and cut a hole in the turf over the passage, 

 covering it with a sod, so as to disclose the nest when eggs are required. Several 

 females lay indiscriminately in the same nest. The}- are very tame, and suffer 

 themselves to be taken by the hand while sitting. Each burrow has two openings, 



