Nest, &c. 
290 NATATORES. TADORNA. SHIELDRAKE, 
addition, however, to those that reside permanently on our 
shores, we are visited by considerable numbers during their 
periodical flights to and from the more northern countries of 
Europe. In the beginning of March I have sometimes seen 
hundreds together upon a favourite locality, where they have 
continued for a few days, and then departed for higher lati- 
tudes, this being the time of return from their equatorial or 
winter migration. The species is distributed throughout the 
greater part of Europe, and is found as far to the northward 
as Iceland, where it is only a summer visitant. The rabbit- 
burrows, with which the sand-hills of the coast are so often 
perforated, are the places that the Shieldrake usually selects 
for nidification ; and in such of these as have been deserted 
by the original inhabitants, the females form their nests of 
_ bent grass and other dry vegetable materials (sometimes as 
far as ten or twelve feet from the entrance), lining them with 
fine soft down plucked from their own breasts. ‘They lay 
from twelve to sixteen eggs, each pure white, or with a very 
faint tinge of green, and of an oval form, being equally 
rounded at both ends. These are incubated for thirty days 
before the exclusion of the young, this being the period com- 
mon to most of the Anatide. During this time the male 
bird keeps an attentive watch in the immediate vicinity of 
his mate, and when hunger calls her from her charge, he in- 
stantly supplies her place, and covers the eggs till her return. 
As soon as the young are hatched, they are conducted, or, as 
more frequently happens, carried in the bill by the parents 
to the water’s edge, and upon this their native element they 
immediately launch, seldom quitting it till fully fledged and 
well able to fly. Bewrcx observes, that if the family in their 
progress from the nest to the sea should happen to be inter- 
rupted by an intruder, the young ones seek the first shelter, 
and squat close down, whilst the parents, directed by the in- 
stinctive feeling that so universally prevails throughout the 
feathered race at this interesting period, adopt the same kind , 
of stratagems as the Partridge, Wild Duck, &c. feigning 
