290 NATATORES. TADORNA. SHIELDRAKE. 



addition, however, to those that reside permanently on our 

 shores, we are visited by considerable numbers during their 

 periodical flights to and from the more northern countries of 

 Europe. In the beginning of March I have sometimes seen 

 hundreds together upon a favourite locality, where they have 

 continued for a few days, and then departed for higher lati- 

 tudes^ this being the time of return from their equatorial or 

 winter migration. The species is distributed throughout the 

 greater part of Europe, and is found as far to the northward 

 as Iceland, where it is only a summer visitant. The rabbit- 

 burrows, with which the sand-hills of the coast are so often 

 perforated, are the places that the Shieldrake usually selects 

 Nest, &c. for nidification ; and in such of these as have been deserted 

 by the original inhabitants, the females form their nests of 

 bent grass and other dry vegetable materials (sometimes as 

 far as ten or twelve feet from the entrance), lining them with 

 fine soft down plucked from their own breasts. They lay 

 from twelve to sixteen eggs, each pure white, or with a very 

 faint tinge of green, and of an oval form, being equally 

 rounded at both ends. These are incubated for thirty days 

 before the exclusion of the young, this being the period com- 

 mon to most of the Anatidce. During this time the male 

 bird keeps an attentive watch in the immediate vicinity of 

 his mate, and when hunger calls her from her charge, he in- 

 stantly supplies her place, and covers the eggs till her return. 

 As soon as the young are hatched, they are conducted, or, as 

 more frequently happens, carried in the bill by the parents 

 to the water's edge, and upon this their native element they 

 immediately launch, seldom quitting it till fully fledged and 

 well able to fly. BEWICK observes, that if the family in their 

 progress from the nest to the sea should happen to be inter- 

 rupted by an intruder, the young ones seek the first shelter, 

 and squat close down, whilst the parents, directed by the in- 

 stinctive feeling that so universally prevails throughout the 

 feathered race at this interesting period, adopt the same kind 

 of stratagems as the Partridge, Wild Duck, &c. feigning 



