The Ruddy Sheld-Duck. 105 



and is made circular in shape. There are sometimes as many as a dozen or fifteen 

 nests in one hillock within the compass of eight or nine yards. The eggs are 

 taken up to the i8th of June, after which they allow the birds to incubate; but 

 they never rob a nest of all the eggs, leaving one or two to avoid driving away 

 the birds. Each person in the village generally has a burrow, and they are 

 scrupulously honest in not taking each others eggs. The female always covers 

 her eggs with down before leaving the nest." 



In the Sheld-Duck the trachea is very peculiar, nearly uniform in size, till 

 near the lower end it is much narrower, and on each side of the bony ring above 

 the bifurcatiou of the bronchial tubes, there are two exceedingly thin bony protu- 

 berances, that on the left side being much the larger. 



Family— ANA TIDAL 



Ruddy Sheld-Duck. 



Tadorna casarca, LiNN. 



THE Ruddy Sheld-Duck is an eastern bird found in southern Spain — its 

 extreme westerly range — north Africa, south-eastern Europe, and across the 

 entire Continent of Asia from the Mediterranean to Japan, south of about latitude 

 55°. Compared with the Common Sheld-Duck it is a more inland bird, frequenting 

 salt lagoons occasionally, but by preference fresh water lakes and rivers, and not 

 visiting the. sea coast. Like T. cornuta it is very Goose-like in its habits, partic- 

 ularly in its gait and mode of feeding, and both in form and colouring approaches 

 the genus Chenalopex, represented in the British list by the Egyptian Goose. The 

 bill, however, in Tadorna is that of a Duck. 



Colonel Irby says the Ruddy Sheld-Duck breeds in the marshes near the 

 Guadalquivir, also on the opposite side of the Straits in Morocco. It is found 



Vot IV. .< 



