Mergansers 



Their appetite is so voracious that often some of their food must 

 be disgorged from their distended crops before the birds are able 

 to rise from the water. An almost exclusive fish diet, with the 

 constant exercise they must keep up to secure it, makes their 

 flesh so rank and tough that no sportsman thinks of shooting 

 the mergansers for food ; and by sudden, skilful dives the birds 

 are as difficult to kill as the true "water witches." Only the 

 youngest, most inexperienced housekeeper thinks of buying any 

 saw-billed duck in market; the serrated edges indicating that 

 the bill is used as a fish chopper, and fish food never makes flesh 

 that is acceptable to a fastidious palate. 



In the United States, at least, the red-breasted mergansers 

 are far more abundant than the preceding species, which they 

 very closely resemble after the nuptial dress has been laid aside 

 for the brown and gray winter plumage. Males may be distin- 

 guished by the color of their breasts at any time ; but the females 

 and young of both species are most bewilderingly similar at a 

 little distance. The position of the nostril, near the centre of the 

 American merganser's bill, and near the base of the red-breasted 

 species, is the positive clew to identity. The latter bird's croak is 

 another aid. All mergansers look as if they needed to have their 

 hair brushed. 



While the construction of the nest of these sometimes con- 

 fused relatives is the same, the red-breasted merganser makes its 

 cradle directly on the ground, among rocks or bushes, but never 

 far from water. It is the female that bears all the burden of 

 hatching the creamy buff eggs six to twelve and of feeding 

 and training the young brood; her gorgeous, selfish mate dis- 

 creetly withdrawing from her neighborhood when nursery duties 

 commence. But the long-suffering mother bird is a perfect pat- 

 tern of all the domestic virtues. "I paddled after a brood one 

 hot summer's day," says Chamberlain, "and though several 

 times they were almost within reach of my landing net, they 

 eluded every effort to capture them. Throughout the chase the 

 mother kept close to the young birds, and several times swam 

 across the bow of the canoe in her efforts to draw my attention 

 from the brood and to offer herself as a sacrifice for their escape." 



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