622 



6 



search of crustaceans, with which I usually found their stomachs filled. Though shy and wary, 

 they may be shot by laying in wait for them as they float in with the tide, or by watching one's 

 opportunity, and taking short runs down from the nearest cover to the shore as the flock is 

 under the water, and lying down just before they rise to the surface. With a little practice 

 one is able to calculate with tolerable accuracy how long they will remain under water ; and even 

 when the nearest cover was far from shore I have managed to get within range in two or three 

 runs. I have often been in ambush for long, quite within range of a flock, amusing myself by 

 watching them feeding and disporting themselves ; and certainly the male bird is one of most 

 elegant and beautiful of our sea-Ducks. They are exceedingly expert swimmers, playful, active, 

 and sometimes quarrelsome; but when feeding they appear to forget every thing else, and to 

 devote all their energies to the serious business of obtaining food. When they believe them- 

 selves to be free from danger the entire flock dive together, one appearing to give the signal by 

 turning end up and immediately disappearing under the surface, and the others all follow suit ; 

 but should any thing occur to excite suspicion, one at least remains on the surface whilst the 

 others are diving, and acts as a sentinal. When disturbed, they fly off with great rapidity, rising 

 easily from the surface ; and they usually fly only a few feet above the surface of the water, either 

 in Indian file or else in an irregular flock ; and when they alight again they do so rather abruptly. 

 When swimming the male erects his long tail in an oblique position, sometimes holding it 

 almost erect. 



One season, just as the spring was approaching, I was detained on the Great Belt whilst 

 crossing from Sweden through Denmark to Germany, owing to the difficulty in crossing the ice. 

 The ice was in some places broken, and in others was full of large holes ; and the myriads of 

 Ducks which I saw was almost inconceivable, a large proportion of them being Long-tailed 

 Ducks. The fishermen caught numbers by sinking nets through the holes in the ice and placing 

 them in a zig-zag position along the holes on the bottom ; the Ducks when diving after shells 

 got entangled in the meshes of the net. I went out several times to assist in taking up the nets ; 

 and, to judge by the numbers caught, it must have been a profitable business. Dr. Sundstrom 

 informs me that on the coasts of Upland and Sodermanland, in Sweden, the Long-tailed Ducks 

 appear as soon as the ice begins to break up in holes, and are found in myriads until late in 



o 



March or early in April. On the coast of Aland vast numbers are shot by the peasants, either 

 by watching for them near the open places in the ice, or by putting out stuffed decoys. " It is 

 not very unusual," he writes, " for one peasant to shoot in a single spring 300 or more Long- 

 tailed Ducks, besides Eiders, Scoters, and other Ducks ; and at one peasants' place called 

 Klafskar, where this bird is very numerous, the peasant has shot as many as 600 to 800 in 

 one spring, all being killed with a pea-rifle. Some of these would be eaten directly ; but 

 most of them are salted down for future use." I have not had an opportunity of observing 

 the present species during the breeding-season, and am indebted to Messrs. Harvie-Brown and 

 Seebohm, who have just returned from a most successful expedition to North-east Russia, for 

 the following notes on its nidification. The former of these gentlemen writes to me as 

 follows: — "That portion of Siberia in Europe visited by Mr. H. Seebohm and myself during 

 the past summer of 1875 may, with some reason, be considered the head quarters during the 

 breeding^season of several species of our European Anatidse. The apparent total absence of the 



