The Golden- eyes. 365 



as it is a most expert swimmer and diver. 

 It is one of the shyest of Ducks, and very 

 difficult to shoot. It makes the same 

 grating sound when calling to its fellows 

 during flight as the Scaup and the Tufted 

 Duck. It is a clumsy walker on the land, 

 and lives almost entirely on the water, 

 feeding on nearly every kind of both 

 animal and vegetable food that its un- 

 rivalled powers of diving enable it to find 

 at the bottom : small fish, young frogs, 

 shell-fish, insects, the seeds and buds or 

 tender leaves of water-plants, nothing 

 comes amiss to. it. 



" But the most remarkable fact in the 

 history of the Golden-eye is its habit of 

 occasionally perching on the bare branch 

 of some forest tree, and of discovering a 

 hole in the trunk, sometimes quite a small 

 one, but leading to a hollow inside, where 

 it deposits its eggs on the rotten chips of 

 wood without any nest, like a woodpecker. 

 These breeding-places are sometimes a 

 considerable distance from the ground. 

 In the valley of the Petchora I have seen 

 one at least five-and-twenty feet from the 

 ground; but one I saw in the valley of 

 the Yenesay was not more than half as 

 high. It has been seen to convey its 

 young one by one down to the water 



