HABITS AND MIGRATIONS OF WILDFOWL. 11 



daybreak, so I presume they spend the night, when on the coast, 

 out on the open sea, just as Brent Geese and Mergansers do. 



The crop of a young male Goldeneye, shot October 22nd, 

 about 2 p.m., was empty, but the gizzard was packed full of sharp 

 gritty sand, with rather large quartz pebbles. I have often seen 

 the bill of a Goldeneye, after coming up from a dive, full of 

 bottom refuse ; this he lays on the water, and eats at leisure, 

 after the manner of a surface-feeding duck. 



Mergansers are, I think, by far the fastest swimming ducks 

 we have ; low in the water, with neck erect, they can quite outwit 

 a gunning punt, and seldom indeed do they allow approach 

 within fair range. When undisturbed, they frequently land on 

 the sides of the sandbanks, and when ashore tliey stand nearly 

 erect. I remember once, when at Bodo, in Nordland, getting 

 quite close to a Merganser sitting nearly bolt upright on a small 

 rock protruding from the deep water, and during the winter time 

 they can often be seen thus standing along the sides of the tidal 

 channels. When alarmed, they waddle quickly down to the 

 water, or fly direct from the ground. Mergansers never stay 

 inside the harbour by night: about dusk they all, to a bird, 

 leave the channel where they have been busy feeding all day, and 

 resort to the open sea for the night. One bird, shot thus going 

 out at night, was crammed full of tiny plaice, which they catch 

 about the sandy-bottomed channels which they frequent. When 

 feeding they allow themselves to drive up with the flood perhaps 

 a quarter or lialf a mile, when they all rise, and, flying back to 

 their original starting-place, recommence their raids on the finny 

 ones. With the first of the light in the morning they return from 

 the sea to the harbour channels to feed. 



About thirty of these birds arrived on our coast on 

 October 20th, and I saw them all file out to sea about four 

 o'clock in the afternoon. Their flight, like their natatory powers, 

 is very rapid, and they usually move in a long thin line when on 

 the wing in company. A winged Merganser is generally a lost 

 one. The local name for it is " Yawol." 



The Goosander, Mergus merganser, a far heavier and more 

 bulky bird, is seldom found on the coast, unless driven by hard 

 weather from his inland haunts, but the Merganser is essentially 

 marine in its winter habits, and I think never during the winter 

 season resorts to fresh- water lakes or streams inland, though 



