DECEMBER 239 



above the cliffs, come down to whet their palates with 

 a little sea fare. 



There is a gaily-coloured group in the little sandy 

 haven close to the boulder point; nine sheldrakes, 

 brilliant with glossy green heads, snowy breasts and 

 backs, chestnut flanks, and vermilion bills and legs. 

 Their daily diet of shell-fish and crustaceans render the 

 flesh of these splendid birds so rank that nobody cares 

 to shoot them, and they are fairly plentiful along this 

 coast. They are remarkable as the only British members 

 of the duck tribe of which the female is as brightly 

 feathered as the male. She runs no risk therefrom in 

 the nesting season, for she lays her eggs deep in some 

 rabbit-hole in the clean white sand of the links, where 

 her gay mantle cannot betray her to passers-by. But 

 this question is not easy to answer did Nature indulge 

 the female sheldrake with fine feathers in consideration 

 of her subterranean habit of incubation ? or has instinct 

 prompted the said habit because of the coat of many 

 colours ? 



Beyond the sheldrakes, where a little stream trickles 

 out to sea through a bed of green weed, three couple 

 of widgeon, liveliest and gracefullest of all British 

 ducks, are sunning themselves. One of them, a female, 

 is performing a singular movement, of which it is not 

 easy to divine the meaning. As each wavelet rolls in 

 she stoops to meet it, and plunges her face into the 

 salt water. She neither can be drinking or eating, for 

 she swallows nothing; nor can she be washing, for 

 there is no ambiguity about a duck's ablutions when it 



