334 ANATID^E. 



birds are best while they feed at the mouths of rivers, 

 and about fresh-water, but when they feed at sea on fishes, 

 Crustacea, and mollusca, I have found them coarse and 

 ill flavoured. They feed principally during the night. 



When these Ducks are not excited or alarmed, their note 

 is a low whistle, but at other times it is a rough croak. 

 The Dun-bird is not so slender and elegant in form as 

 the Wild Duck, and others of the first division, or more 

 surface-feeding Ducks, but are short in the body, and 

 depressed in form, swimming low in the water, and are 

 observed to be bad walkers on land, from the backward 

 position of their legs ; an arrangement of great service to 

 them as swimmers and divers. Rusticus, of Godalming, 

 says that fifty or more have been seen on the piece of 

 water there called the Old Pond, in company with Wild 

 Ducks ; from which, however, they always separated on 

 rising. Messrs. Sheppard and Whitear, in their Norfolk 

 Catalogue of Birds, mention, in 1825, that this species 

 breed at Scoulton Mere ; and the Rev. Mr. Lubbock sent 

 me word that it has also bred there of late years. Mr. 

 Hewitson says a small number of the Pochard remain 

 during the summer months, and breed on the borders of 

 the inland meres, so numerous in many parts of Holland. 

 The nest is placed amongst the rushes, or other coarse 

 herbage abounding in those situations. The eggs vary in 

 number from ten to twelve. The specimen figured in Mr. 

 Hewitson's work on the eggs of our British Birds, is of a 

 buffy-white colour, two inches in length, and one inch and 

 five-eighths in breadth. I have seen a Duck which had 

 all the appearance of having been bred between the Po- 

 chard and the Ferruginous Duck, the species next in suc- 

 cession. M. Vieillot says this species appears in France 

 at two periods of the year, namely, in October on its way 



