VELVET SCOTER. 605 



FULIGULA FUSCA. 

 VELVET SCOTER. 



(PLATE 65.) 



Anas nigra major, JSriss. Orn. vi. p. 423 (1760). 



Anas fusca, Linn. Syst. Nat. i. p. 196 (1766) ; et auctorum plurimoram Gmelin, 



Latham, Temminck, (Bonaparte), (Dresser), (Sounders), &c. 

 Anas fuliginosa, Bechst. Naturg. Deutschl. iii. p. 962 (1809). 

 Melanitta fusca (Linn.), Boie, Isis, 1822, p. 664. 

 Oidemia fusca (Linn.), Flem. Phil Zool. ii. p. 260 (1822). 

 Platypus fuscus (Linn.), Brehm, Lehrb. Naturg. eur. Vog. ii. p. 822 (1824). 

 Anas carbo, Pall. Zoogr. Rosso- Asiat. ii. p. 244 (1826). 

 Fuligula fusca (Linn.), Degl. Orn. Eur. ii. p. 472 (1849). 



The Velvet Scoter is a regular winter visitor to the British Islands, but 

 is far less abundant than the Common Scoter. It is found in small 

 numbers along the south and east coasts of England, more frequently on 

 the east coast of Scotland, although only a straggler to the Shetlands, and 

 becomes rarer on the west coast of Scotland and the adjoining islands. In 

 Ireland it is said by Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey to be comparatively rare, 

 and only met with at some considerable distance out at sea. It has been 

 thought that this bird bred in Scotland, but no absolute proof of the fact 

 has yet been obtained. 



The Velvet Scoter is a circumpolar bird, but as American examples are 

 without the two black lines extending from the nostrils to the nail on each 

 side of the bill, they are regarded as subspecifically distinct under the 

 name of Fuligula fusca velvetina*. The breeding-range of the Old-World 

 form of the Velvet Scoter extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It 

 has not been recorded from Iceland, but has been known to wander on 

 migration as far as the Faroes and Greenland in the west and Alaska in 

 the east. It ranges as far north as lat. 69 both in Europe and in Asia, 

 and in moorland districts as far south as the Baltic Provinces in Europe, 

 and to lat. 55 in South-east Siberia. It winters on the coasts of Western 

 Europe, occasionally wandering as far south as the Mediterranean and 

 Black Seas. It passes through Turkestan, Dauria, and Mongolia on 

 migration to winter on the shores of the Caspian Sea and the coasts of 

 China and Japan. The American form breeds in Arctic America and 

 winters in the Great Lakes and on both coasts of the United States. 



The Velvet Scoter is not so exclusively a marine duck as the Black 



* The synonymy of the American form is as follows : 

 Oidemia velvetina, Cass^n, Proc. Ac. Nat. Sci. Philad. v. p. 126 (I860), 

 ^lelanetta velvetina (Cass.), Baird, B. N. Amer. p. 806 (1858). 

 (Edemia fusca, b. (?) velvetina (Cass.), Coues, B. N.-West, p. 682 (1874). 



