Family ANATIDyE. Genus Fuligula. 



Subfamily Fuligulin^. 



HARLEQUIN DUCK. 



FULIGULA HISTRIONICA— (Zw««w). 



Geographical Distribution. — British .• Very rare and acci- 

 dental straggler to the British Islands. Out of a score or more 

 examples recorded as "British," only about half-a-dozen have 

 withstood the test of a searching inquiry into their antecedents 

 {Conf. Prof. Newton, Ibis, 1859, p. 162, and J. H. Gurney, 

 Rambles of a Naturalist, p. 263). The claim of this species to 

 rank as "British" rests on the following what appears to be 

 thoroughly reliable evidence. Scotland : Lewis (?) (2 examples, 

 recorded by Montagu in 1802, and presented to Mr. Sowerby, 

 by whom they were figured in his British Miscellany in 1806) ; 

 Aberdeenshire (i example), 1858, a male in full adult plumage. 

 England: Yorkshire (i trustworthy example, found dead in the 

 autumn of 1862, and 2 others with no date, which are not worthy 

 of credence) ; Northumberland (3 seen, 2 secured, both young 

 males), December, 1886. Foreign: Eastern Palsearctic and 

 Nearctic regions. Probably a Nearctic species that has only 

 comparatively recently extended its range into the Old World. 

 Resident in Iceland, and breeds in Greenland, south of the 

 Arctic Circle. Breeds across the North American Continent from 

 about the Arctic Circle south to lat. 45°. Thence it is a resident 

 in the Aleutian Islands, and probably breeds in Kamtschatka, the 

 Stanavoi Mountains, the valley of the Arnoor, and the Baikal 

 district. The evidence of the occurrence of this species further 

 west is extremely meagre and unsatisfactory. Sabanaeff states 

 that it breeds in the Ural and Yaroslav ; Eversmann records it 

 also from the Ural, and Nordmann from Finland. It is said by 



