i33 BRITISH BIRDS. WITH THEIR NESTS AND EGGS. 



Family ANA TIDsH. 



POCHARD. 



Fuligula ferina, LJNN. 



THE Pochard, Poker, or Red-eyed Poker, of which the female is known as 

 the Dunbird,* is a common winter visitor to the British Islands, and some 

 remain resident throughout the year nesting in suitable localities. It is generally 

 distributed over the greater part of Europe and _ Asia, except in the Arctic and 

 Subarctic regions of both Continents, also (if we refuse to admit the specific 

 validity of the American Pochard, Fuligula americana] covers a great part of North 

 America. American examples of the Pochard differ in being slightly larger 

 and with no black at the base of the bill, greyer back and whiter belly. 

 America, however, possesses a closely allied species in the famous Canvas-back 

 Duck, F. vallisneriana, a name derived from a fresh-water plant on which it feeds 

 and thereby obtains its delicate flavour. The Canvas-back is a much larger Duck 

 than the Pochard and with a longer, slenderer and more tapering bill, and there 

 are also differences of plumage, the chief of which are the character of the mark- 

 ings on the back ; these in the former have the waved lines of black more open 

 and less prominently marked, the ground-white colour greatly predominating : a 

 well-marked feature to which it owes its familiar name of Canvas-back. 



The immigrant Pochards arrive on our shores in October, and occasionally 

 are met with as early as the middle of September; they are by no means an 

 exclusively marine and estuarine species, but great numbers resort to inland waters, 

 particularly those which are shallow in some parts and have their bottoms over- 

 grown with weeds ; they are very rapid divers, feeding almost exclusively under 

 water. On the Lincolnshire coast Mr. G. H. Caton Haigh considers the 

 Pochard a rather scarce Duck ; he has oftener met with old red-headed males 

 than females or young. It is, however, very irregular in its appearance, a year 

 passing without coming across a single flock ; at the beginning of this century it 

 was very common in the fens and in Thoresby Field, in North Lincolnshire. 



As a winter visitor the Pochard is far more numerous in Scotland and Ireland 



* In many localities this name is applied indiscriminately to male and female, young and old alike. In 

 the Fens they used to be known as "Parkers" or "half-birds." 



