592 BRITISH BIRDS. 



seen to convey its young one by one down to the water pressed between its 

 bill and its breast. In many places the natives take advantage of this 

 choice of a nesting-site and put up boxes with small entrance-holes in the 

 side. It is glad enough to avail itself of these convenient situations, but 

 generally pays the penalty of its trustfulness by having its eggs robbed by 

 the hard-hearted peasants. To rob a nest for the sake of a museum that 

 may give pleasure to hundreds of students for scores of years is one thing, 

 but to do so for sport or food is another. Where a hollow tree-trunk 

 cannot be found a hollow branch is often selected, and in some parts 

 of Germany where the forests are far too well farmed to admit of the ex- 

 istence of hollow trees, the Golden-eye, according to Naumann, breeds on 

 the tops of pollard willows or even amongst the reeds on the ground. The 

 down, like that of the Smew or the Sheldrakes and other Ducks which 

 breed in hollow trees or holes in the ground where it cannot be seen, is 

 much paler than that of Ducks generally, being a delicate pale lavender- 

 grey with very obscure paler centres. The eggs vary from ten to nineteen, 

 but thirteen is a not unusual number. They are bright greyish green, 

 smooth in texture, and with considerable gloss. They vary in length from 

 2'4 to 2*1 inch, and in breadth from T75 to T55 inch. Exceptionally grey 

 eggs of the Golden-eye can scarcely be distinguished from exceptionally 

 green eggs of the Pochard ; but the difference in the colour of the down 

 makes confusion between them impossible. 



The Golden-eye is about as large as the Pintail. The adult male 

 in full nuptial dress has the head and upper neck black, glossed with 

 purple on the forehead and throat and with green on the other parts, 

 though in certain lights these colours may be reversed ; it has a large 

 white spot between the base of the bill and the eye; the back, rump 

 upper tail-coverts, the margins of the scapulars, the innermost secon- 

 daries, the lesser wing-coverts, the primaries and the first two or three 

 secondaries, the axillaries and under wing-coverts, the tail, and the feathers 

 round the thighs are black, the latter having white tips ; the whole of the 

 rest of the plumage is white ; the scapulars (which are, as has been already 

 described, white broadly margined with black) and the feathers of the 

 lower flanks (which are broadly margined with black on their outer webs) 

 are elongated into what might be termed nuptial plumes ; and the feathers 

 of the hind head and nape are somewhat filamented and slightly elongated, 

 forming the rudiments of a crest. Bill black ; legs and feet orange-yellow, 

 webs dusky ; irides yellow. The adult female has the head and upper neck 

 uniform brown, the rest of the feathers of the upper parts being nearly 

 black, with pale slate-grey margins to those of the mantle and scapulars ; 

 and a dull white ring passes round the lower neck. The central secondaries 

 are pure white, the greater wing-coverts are white tipped with dark brown, 

 and the median wing-coverts are tipped with white. The breast and flanks 



