ASSISTED VISION 297 



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 1 



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 move- 

 ment, 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 



