no BRITISH BIRDS. [vol. xiii. 



advisable to publish the following extract from my own notes : 

 " The Green Woodpecker nested in Brittlesford Wood, I.W., 

 this year [1910]. As far as I know it is not recorded in the 

 Island as a breeder." Brittlesford Wood is at the head of 

 Wootton Creek, about midway between Cowes and Ryde. 

 I had seen the bird once or twice in the Island before this date, 

 but had never known it to breed, and an old friend and keen 

 observer, resident in the Island, informed me that he had never 

 seen the bird till shortly before 1910. Arthur Arnold. 



DIVING POWERS OF SHOVELER. 



One day in mid- August I was looking at the waterfowl in a 

 secluded corner of one of the reservoirs at Tring, and noticed 

 with some surprise a Shoveler {Spatula clypcata) in the act 

 of diving. It was up again presently, but did not remain 

 long on the surface ; for, first immersing its head, it flipped 

 under again with all the address of a Dabchick. This perform- 

 ance was repeated more than twenty times in the course of a 

 few minutes, and may have gone on for longer still, but the 

 bird passed from sight behind some intervening rushes. The 

 duration of the dives was from 6-8 seconds, and, after coming 

 to the surface, the bird always rose in the water and flapped 

 its wings. I could not tell its age with certainty : it may 

 have been a bird of the year, but, even so, it was full grown 

 and bore no obvious sign of immaturity. Upon what it 

 was feeding I cannot say, but on more than one occasion I 

 saw its mandibles open and close again in a way that suggested 

 the crushing of an object of some size, possibly a Limncea 

 or other mollusc. Now, the downy chicks of many surface- 

 feeding Ducks, e.g., Mallard and Teal, are expert divers, 

 whether for the purpose of obtaining food or evading danger, 

 as anyone knows who has watched a domesticated Mallard 

 with a young brood on a horse-pond. This aptitude is soon 

 lost, however, although possibly it persisted until maturity 

 among the ancestors of our surface-feeding Ducks, and one 

 seldom sees a full-grown bird dive unless it is wounded or in 

 imminent peril. I feel sure that behaviour such as I have 

 described, the regular and purposeful employment of diving 

 in order to obtain food, is unusual in a full-grown Shoveler — 

 it was at any rate quite new in my experience — and is perhaps 

 to be regarded as the exceptional persistence of a habit 

 that is usually lost in early life. Chas. Oldham. 



[For previous notes on the diving of surface-feeding Ducks 

 (including the Shoveler) see Brit. Birds, Vols. IX., p. 301 ; 

 X., p. 22. — Eds.] 



