136 ANATID^. 



A fowler of much experience^ who followed it in boats, 

 has remarked of this duck, that when approaching the centre 

 of a large flock, in calm weather, the birds divided into two 

 bodies, and swam away in opposite directions, allowing the " cot " 

 in which the shooters were — they keeping so low as to be invisible 

 — to pass between. Each of these flocks, if similarly approached, 

 would again divide, to the annoyance of their pursuers, who could 

 only get a few birds sufficiently near each other to be killed at 

 one discharge. Scaups were seldom so difficult to be approached 

 as wigeon or wild-ducks, and always made the attempt to swim 

 away ; but if the boat approached too quickly on them, they took 

 wing. 



They are considered very hard to kill when struck. Eight or 

 nine birds have been obtained at one shot with a shoulder-gun, and 

 frequently about a dozen with the swivel-gun; by its means so many 

 as twenty-four were procured at a shot on the 4th of March, 

 1845, more than half of which were adult males. On this 

 occasion the shooter approached them unseen, at an unusually 

 early hour in the morning, when they w^ere not expecting an 

 enemy. At such times they float lightly and buoyantly on the 

 water, but, when danger is apprehended, sink themselves in it, so 

 that little more than the line of the back appears above the sur- 

 face. The scaup and other diving ducks, when wounded, swim 

 very low in the water, often only with the bill from the nostrils 

 exposed. "When keeping thus and the surface is ruffled, they 

 cannot be seen by the shooter, though when calm, the ripple 

 made by the bill betrays them. The disappearance of the 

 wounded birds may have given rise to the belief of some old 

 shooters here, that the tUving ducks, or divers, as they are com- 

 monly called, when wounded, go to the bottom, and laying hold 

 of some objects, such as sea-wrack, &c., die there ! 



Scaups are, excepting wigeon, the most numerous of all ducks 



in Belfast Bay."^ They sometimes appear in very large flocks, 



and were particularly abundant in the great Anatida winter of 



1837-38; three flocks of above a thousand birds each, and 



* On the coast of Sussex also they are said to be so by Mr. Knox. 



