BEDPOLL BEBEPING. 49 



confined to the British islajids.' It occurs on the continent 

 pretty often in the winter, migrating southwards, but has not 

 been known to breed, except, according to the assertion of a 

 single naturalist (Bailly), in the Alps of Savoy. One day as I 

 came in from a walk at the Engstlen-alp (6000 feet), Anderegg 

 brought me a little bird he had shot, which he considered very 

 rare, and called the Bluttropf, from the patch of blood-coloured 

 feathers on the head. This was beyond all doubt the Eedpoll ; 

 and as he had seen another, and this one was a female, I have 

 no doubt at all that they had bred or were breeding. I was sorry 

 for the death of the bird at the time ; bwt since I have learnt 

 that its occurrence at that time and place is a curiosity, I have 

 been glad that I was able to place its identity beyond all doubt. 



Ducks of all kinds come to Switzerland from the north in 

 great numbers, attracted by the great lakes, and occasionally 

 may breed upon the mountains. Anderegg was strolling out 

 one morning very early, at the Engstlen-alp, smoking his pipe 

 before breakfast, in meditative mood, with his hands in his 

 pockets, and mounting a steep grassy slope, when just as his 

 head came on a level with a little pool of water left by the 

 melting snow, such a clatter and fluster took place almost under 

 his very nose, that his mouth opened and his pipe fell out, before 

 his hands could get out of his pockets to save it. The startled 

 strangers were Wild-duck, who had thus passed the night within 

 a stone's throw of the hotel ; to judge by the feathers they left 

 behind them in the hubbub, I conjectured they were Teal. 



But I have still to speak of partial or internal migration 

 in Switzerland ; and this is what, if I am not mistaken, will 



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