194 BRITISH SEA BIRDS. 



caught in the flight-nets on the Wash, a locality 

 which is, or used to be twenty years ago, a favourite 

 resort of this Duck. 



A few Wigeons remain in our Islands to breed, 

 frequenting the northern counties of Scotland, in- 

 cluding the Orkneys and the Shetlands, but the vast 

 majority return to the Arctic regions to do so. Its 

 favourite nesting-places are scrubby woodlands, 

 swamps, and heaths, clothed with coarse herbage, 

 studded with lakes and tarns, and intersected by 

 streams. Although not gregarious at this period, 

 the numbers of nests found scattered over a small 

 area, suggests at least a social tendency. The nest 

 is usually made close to the water-side, amongst 

 heath or grass, or sheltered by a little bush, and is 

 made of dry herbage and leaves, warmly lined with 

 down plucked from the body of the female. The 

 six to ten eggs are cream- or buffish-white, smooth 

 in texture, but with little gloss. These are laid in 

 May. 



PINTAIL DUCK. 



This elegant species, the Anas aczita of Linnaeus, 

 by some modern writers generically distinguished 

 as Dafila acuta, is, next to the Wigeon perhaps, 

 the most abundant of the non-diving Ducks upon 

 the coast. Like that bird it visits the British seas 

 in some numbers in autumn, returning north in 

 spring. From the extreme length of the two 

 central upper tail coverts, which project two inches 

 or more beyond the tail, this Duck has been termed 



