Taken in Santa Barbara 



The Surf Scoter 



preceding species, to- 

 gether with an irregular 

 admixture of Scaups, 

 California Murres, 

 and Tufted Puffins. Day 

 after day this strange 

 phenomenon persisted, 

 though the proportions 

 of the personnel fur- 

 nished by the local 

 breeding murres and 

 puffins shifted some- 

 what from hour to hour. 

 It was a weird and sug- 

 gestive sight, a stranded 

 company of derelicts, a 

 sort of Old Ladies' Home 

 whose only furnishings 

 were an open-air plunge 

 and (usually guaran- 

 teed) an absence of spec- 

 tators. 



Apropos of dere- 

 licts, we remark again 

 the constant wastage of 

 bird-life occasioned by 

 the seepage of oil along 

 our Santa Barbara coast. 

 Surf Scoters are among 

 the chief sufferers, and 

 the sight of a sick duck, 

 bedraggled with crude 

 oil, tottering down the 

 beach-line, is a common- 

 place of all the less- 

 frequented stretches. 

 When such a bird is caught (and it is a mercy to catch it and put it out 

 of its misery) it is often found to be in the last stages of emaciation, a mere 

 bundle of feathers. The bird languishes not through lack of food, which 

 is abundant enough, but because in its distracted efforts to rid its plumage 

 of the entangling slime, the bird imbibes the fatal mixture. Purgation 

 and emaciation follow without redress. So because we are used to seeing 



1838 



Photo by the Author 



SURF SCOTERS, ADULT MALES 



