148 NYROCA FERINA 



DISTRIBUTION 



The Common Pochard is one of the characteristic ducks of the pahearctic region, breeding through- 

 out much of Europe and the western parts of Asia. The northwestern limit of its range is Iceland, for 

 Iceland which there is one reliable record, namely, June 20, 1860 (Hantzsch, 1905). On the 



Faroes Faroes it has been taken several times (ibid.) but there is no record of its breeding there. 



British On the Shetlands also it appears to be only a migrant or winter visitor (A. II. Evans 



Isles and Buckley, 1899) though it has bred on Hoy in the Orkneys (Buckley and Harvie- 



Brown, 1891) and on the Hebrides (Millais, 1913). On the Scotch mainland the species nests in suit- 

 able localities throughout, having been reported from Stirling, Perth, Tay, Kinross, Fife, Ross, 

 Moray, Elgin, Nairn, Roxburgh, Berwick, and Wigtownshire (Millais, 1913; et al.). The breeding 

 range in Great Britain has been extending in recent years, so that now the Pochard is known to breed 

 in almost all the English and some Welsh counties, there being records for all east-coast counties from 

 Northumberland to Kent, as well as for Hants, Dorset, Sussex, Herts, Bucks, Berks, Beds, Staff, 

 Leicester, Notts, Salop, Lanes, Merioneth, and probably Anglesey (Millais, 1913; Witherby el al., 

 1919-22; and numerous others). Li Ireland it has been reported breeding in counties Kerry, Tipper- 

 ary, Westmeath, Meath, Sligo, Down and Antrim (Ussher and Warren, 1900), though the only 

 really reliable breeding record is one for Monaghan, 1907 (Ussher, 1908). 



On the Scandinavian peninsula the Pochard is by no means a common bird. There is no record 

 „ of its ever having bred in Norway, though Collett (1873) speaks of it as resident on the 



southwest coast. In Sweden it is said to have bred in Ostergotland, on Oland and on 



Sweden Gotland (Dresser, fide Millais, 1913), while in Denmark it breeds regularly in small 



Denmark numbers (Winge, Schioler,^rfe Millais, 1913; "G. L.," 1918). A few nest in northern 



. Holland, especially in Brabant (Allarda, van Oort, fide Millais, 1913; Snouckaert van 



Schauburg, 1908) and I imagine in Belgium, too, though there is no available evidence 

 France to substantiate this. As for France there seems to be no record of nesting beyond that 



_ . of Lacordaire (in Paris, 1907) who states that the Pochard breeds in the departement 



Haute-Saone. It is an equally rare breeding bird in Spain, on the Albufera of Valencia, 

 in the marismas of the Guadalquivir and in La Mancha (H. Noble, 1902; A. Chapman and Buck, 

 1910), but is not known to have nested ever in Portugal. 



In Germany the Pochard is a fairly common breeding bird, especially in the northern and eastern 

 parts. Naumann (1896-1905) states that it has nested in Mecklenburg, Brunswick, Brandenburg, 

 „ eastern Prussia, Silesia, Saxony, Thuringia, Bavaria and Baden. To this may be added 



the records of von Homeyer (1872) for Pomerania, of Wiistnei (1902) for Mecklenburg, 

 of Schalow (1915) for Brandenburg, of R. Blasius (1896) for Brunswick and of Hartert (1892) for 

 eastern Prussia. According to Biinger (1900) and Hesse (1910) this duck has become very common 

 as a nesting bird on the lakes about Berlin and Potsdam. There is no evidence of Pochards having 

 ever bred in Switzerland, and the statements of older writers that it had nested in one or two local- 

 ities in northern Italy seem to be very doubtful (Giglioli, 1886; Arrigoni degli Oddi, 1904). 



An isolated nesting locality seems to be eastern Algeria, where Pochards breed abundantly on 

 . . . Lake Fetzara (Zedlitz, 1914), and have been seen as late as May near Ain Dahlia 



(Menegaux, 1919) and as late as June at Lake Halloula (Tristram, 1860a). 

 Turning north again I find the Pochard recorded as breeding in Austria (Mojsisovics von Mojsvar, 

 1897),Czecho-Slovakia (Fritsch, 1872) and Hungary, where it nests commonly (von Mojsisovics, 

 Central 1886; von Dalla-Torre and vonTschusi, 1885; Schenk, 1906, p. 202; Frivaldsky, Mad- 



Europe a,rksz, fide Millais, 1913). In Poland the species nests regularly and in tolerable num- 



bers (Taczanowski, 1888; Katin, 1912), though in Kurland, Livonia and Esthonia it is a rare breeding 

 bird (Loudon-Lisden, 1909). Nests have been found on the Aland Islands and there are a few even 

 recent records of its breeding near Helsingfors (Palmen, 1876; Palmgren, 1913). Remarkable is 



