lS 4 BRITISH BIRDS. WITH THEIR NESTS AND EGGS 



The only note of the Scoter I am acquainted with is a soft musical whistle, 

 peu-peu-peu, which I can understand on a dark night, sounding aloft, might easily 

 be taken, and in all probability would, for some species of Plover or Wader. 



Quoting from Yarrell's "British Birds," (Ed. IV.. Vol. IV., p. 474), "The 

 call-note during the breeding season is said by Faber to resemble the syllables 

 tii-tii, tii-tii, on the part of the male, the female responding with a harsh re-re-re- 

 re-re." ; this latter is probably the ordinary grating call-note. Have birds a 

 special migration note used exclusively on that occasion ? During a strong 

 migration on a dark night in autumn, I have frequently been completely puzzled 

 by the notes of passing migrants, and any attempt to name the particular travellers 

 becomes the merest guess work. 



The food of the Scoter is the same as the Eider Ducks, various marine 

 mollusca and crustaceans. I have found the stomachs crammed with coarse 

 fragments of mussel shells. They feed over the same grounds as the Scaup, and 

 may often be seen in company with those Ducks. They are excellent divers, 

 and I have timed them when feeding to remain under from thirty-five to fifty 

 seconds. In the act of diving the body is thrown suddenly forward and the tail 

 extended fan-like ; on one occasion, within the Humber, I timed the average 

 immersion as forty seconds. In 1896, Scoters were unusually early in arriving on 

 the Lincolnshire coast, thousands having come by the second of September. I saw 

 great numbers of females, and well advanced young, off the Norwegian coast, in 

 the middle of August. The males forsake the females as soon as incubation 

 commences, and when the young are hatched the female conducts them to the 

 water, when the little things are fatigued, swimming low to take them on her 

 back. The nest is described as formed of grass and aquatic plants, and the eggs, 

 buried in greyish down, from six to ten in number, of a deep yellow-brown. 



Mr. Wolley says, writing from Muonioniska, (Hewitson's " Eggs of British 

 Birds," Vol. II., p. 422), " It breeds late in the season, in islands of rivers and 

 lakes, and in tussocky parts of marshes, often year after year frequenting the 

 same place. The flocks of Scoters generally hold themselves away from the shores, 

 but are much less wild than when away at sea in the winter. The name by which 

 they are called here means, in English, ' Sea-bird.' It is very pretty to see this 

 child of the ocean more of a fish than a fowl, as our Roman Catholic ancestors 

 held it to be come to enjoy the holiday season of love in a sunny lake or river. 

 The notes of a number of them together have a wonderfully sweet effect." 



Indeed I cannot well imagine a greater change for our Sea-Duck, after nine 

 months of ceaseless tossing to and fro on a grey ocean wilderness, swept by winds 

 cold, cruel, and pitiless, in contrast with the three months of Arctic sunshine and 



