NOTES AND QUERIES. 27 



bread-crusts, pretty freely, but the duck seldom. My practice is to give 

 thern as much barley-meal as they will eat (very little just now) at 8.30 a.m. ; 

 theu to let them have some pieces of ox-liver, or — when many rabbits are 

 being killed — of fresh rabbit-liver. At dusk the other water-fowl are fed 

 with maize and barley, and the Eiders dive and work away at this, and get 

 a good deal. After this they have as much liver as they can eat, varied 

 occasionally with earthworms. As to plumage, I feel certain that if my 

 drake had been in sound condition during the past twelve months, and 

 under less unnatural conditions, he would have acquired adult plumage 

 this winter. Some time in October last year the drake began to show a 

 few white feathers on the crop and neck, also on the flanks ; while some 

 few of the feathers on the back began to change their colour, and became 

 by March of a silvery white, where they had been black. By that time the 

 crop had become of a pure white. In June this had become speckled with 

 a few dark brown and dark grey feathers, and by the beginning of August 

 it was more dusky than white, and at a hundred yards distance the drake 

 was only distinguishable from the duck by the contrast between her reddish 

 brown colour and his sooty faded brown. It was clearly the nearest 

 approach to the plumage of the duck that he was intended to attain, at least 

 in his second summer. The duck Eider threw all the flight-feathers in her 

 wings in one night, quite at the end of August, and, about a fortnight later, 

 the drake threw almost the whole of his in the course of one day, and their 

 body-feathers came off, and were replaced by new ones in an extraordinarily 

 short space of time. The drake is now in adult plumage, except that the 

 green of the nape is faint and speckled with greyish brown ; but it is getting 

 more distinct each week. The cap of the head also, where it should be pure 

 black, is speckled in the same way, the lighter feathers showing amongst the 

 dark ones. The shoulders and back are patched with dark colour, and the 

 scapulars are only just beginning to change to white. The crop, breast, 

 belly, and sides of the bird show the complete adult colouring. I am aware 

 that the Eider has been successfully kept, and even bred, at the Zoological 

 Gardens in Regent's Park. Possibly my birds were mismanaged before 

 they reached me, and may have lost vigour of constitution ; but, for whatever 

 cause, they seem to me the most difficult of British ducks to keep in health. 

 I have Goldeneye, Scaup, and Scoter, at this moment, feeding freely on 

 maize and barley, and apparently as thriviug, and doing as well, as the 

 commoner ducks which are swimming with them and with the Eiders in the 

 same piece of water. Most of these find their own living during the summer 

 months, only drawing up in the autumn months to resume the grain diet, 

 which they had neglected since the water-weeds began to grow in the 

 previous spring. — W. H. St. Quintin (Scampston Hall, Rillington, York). 



Birds observed at Rye. — During the months of September and 

 October large flocks of waders were to be seen on the mud-flats near the 



