32 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIRDS 



incessantly, never quite at their ease, wary and watch- 

 ful for foes. A man cannot walk down to the shore or 

 stand out on a hill overlooking the pond without dis- 

 turbing them. They will have an eye upon him. The 

 locomotive-whistle makes every wild duck start that is 

 floating within the limits of the town. I see that these 

 ducks are not here for protection alone, for at last they 

 both dive, and remain beneath about forty pulse-beats, 

 — and again, and again. I think they are looking for 

 fishes. Perhaps, therefore, these divers are more likely 

 to alight in Walden than the black ducks- are. 



April 2, 1859. From near this cliff, I watch a male 

 sheldrake in the river with my glass. It is very busily 

 pluming itself while it sails about, and from time to 

 time it raises itself upright almost entirely out of water, 

 showing its rosaceous breast. It is some sixty rods off, 

 yet I can see the red bill distinctly when it is turned 

 against its white body. Soon after I see two more, and 

 one, which I think is not a female, is more gray and 

 far less distinctly black and white than the other. I 

 think it is a young male and that it might be called by 

 some a gray duck. However, if you show yourself within 

 sixty rods, they will fly or swim off, so shy are they. 

 Yet in the fall I sometimes get close upon a young 

 bird, which dashes swiftly across or along the river and 

 dives. 



April 12, 1859. Saw a duck, apparently a sheldrake, 

 at the northeast end of Cyanean Meadow. It disap- 

 peared at last by diving, and I could not find it. But 

 I saw what looked like a ripple made by the wind, 

 which moved slowly down the river at least forty rods 



