THE RED-BREASTED MERGANSER. 163 



and of the great rapidity with which they ran and dived. Ahhough 

 tlieir foster-parent was very assiduous in her attention to them, 

 they proved, after the first three days, quite indifferent to her ; 

 came to the yard with the poultry, and ate potatoes freely. 

 When visiting the islands of Strangford Lough, on the 20th and 

 21st of June, 1832, I saw two pair of these birds, each pair 

 flying in company. The species was said, by intelligent farmers 

 who accompanied us, to breed here, on Island Mahee, Island 

 Eeagh, and Scatrick. One of our party had often found their 

 nests, which he described as situated in " scroggy'^ places, or 

 where there is some short, thick brushwood : when he has ap- 

 proached the nest, in the absence of the parent, the young birds 

 have left it, and run towards him. The name for these birds, 

 here, is scale-cluck, which my friend, as has been stated, believed to 

 apply to the shell-duck, when he sought to obtain the eggs from 

 this locality. The birds noticed under Goosander (the next species 

 to be treated of), by the latter of the two names, and said to breed 

 about the river Shannon, are probably M. serrator. Sir William 

 Jardine remarks, in one of the excellent notes to his edition of 

 Wilson's ^American Ornithology,' that: — "In Hudson's Bay 

 (according to Hearne) they are called shelldrakes ; the name by 

 wliich they are also distinguished by the common people in all 

 the rivers of the south of Scotland" (vol. iii. p. 90). Audu- 

 bon, too, informs us that "the red-breasted merganser is best 

 known through the United States by the name of shelldrake" 

 (vol. V. p. 93). 



I have met with the red-breasted merganser in Strangford 

 Lough different times in summer since the date last mentioned ; 

 but it will be sufficient to give the following observations, made 

 by Mr. J. R. Garrett in 1849. He remarks :— " On the 3rd of 

 June I saw three pair at Island Gabbogh. The boatman (who is 

 a shooter in winter and a tisherman in summer) showed me a 

 spot on the island where he had, two or three years ago, caught 

 a ' scale-duck ' on her nest, containing twelve eggs. On the 

 smaller Bird Island I saw anotlier pair of mergansers, but could 

 not find their nest. At C'liapel Island I discovered a nest of 



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