370 BIRDS OF THE WEST OF SCOTLAND. 



by a writer in the 'Field Naturalist' (London, 1833, vol. i., p. 

 507), who states that a gentleman in Forfarshire, whose property 

 was bounded on one side by the river North Esk, was accustomed 

 to amuse himself by laying down a quantity of grain, and watching 

 the Wild Ducks regaling themselves on it. After continuing the 

 practice for some time, he brought such crowds of ducks around 

 him that it seemed as if the entire mallard population of that part 

 of the country were present. With his pockets full of loose grain, 

 this old gentleman went out regularly on his sporting expeditions, 

 and returned with a brace or two of mallards without ever firing 

 a shot, for, in their eagerness to gobble up the corn, the birds 

 waddled up to his feet, and all he had to do was to stoop down 

 and quietly seize a victim, which was easily transferred to his 

 capacious pockets. 



The food of the mallard appears to be varied both in kind and 

 in quality. Every farmer knows its partiality for grain of all sorts, 

 and sportsmen who shoot along the sea-coast are familiar with its 

 visits to the shallow pools at low tide. On some of the Ayrshire 

 farms where the use of a gun is prohibited, great damage is 

 sometimes committed by the Wild Ducks in the potato pits. I 

 have seen as many as forty or fifty mallards at one pit. It is only, of 

 course, a small potato that can be swallowed by these birds, but 

 in their hasty pilferings a mistake is occasionally made. I recollect 

 seeing- a male mallard shot by the late Dr Nelson with a potato 

 sticking in its gullet. The bird rose from the field uttering a 

 wheezing sound, and in this way attracted our attention as we 

 were preparing to pitch our camp for a night's shooting. Mr 

 Macgillivray, on the authority of one of his correspondents, says 

 that this bird devours great quantities of frogs, while Mr Thompson 

 speaks of it eating slugs and horse leeches. The last named 

 author, in his well known work on the Birds of Ireland, gives the 

 following as the contents of the stomach of what he calls an 

 'omnivorous mallard' killed at Larne Lough, in October, 1848: 

 An eel, four inches in length; a crab (Carcinas mcenas) an inch 

 broad across the carapace, or shell, and perfect; of marine univalve 

 and bivalve shell-fish, one Lacuna quadrifasciata, two Rissoa inter- 

 rupta, four Rissoa albella, five Modiola discrepans (fry), about twenty 

 of the young of Littorina vulgaris and L. retusa, forty Montacuta 

 purpurea, three hundred and ninety-one Eulla obtusa, and four 

 hundred and seventy-five Rissoa alba: it contained also above four 



