TUFTED DUCK 237 



for food, but in play antics they are often half opened under water just as we see 

 them in the Mallard. 



The young can dive when only a few hours old both in the wild and when hatched 

 under a hen in captivity (J. Whitaker, in Millais, 1913; S. E. Brock, 1912). The 

 first dives are short. 



Flight. Tufted Ducks do not as a rule travel in large flocks, although great 

 assemblies have been found gathered together in their winter quarters. On the wing 

 they have a bold and striking appearance, reminding one a little of our Lesser Scaup, 

 but are even more sharply black-and-white. They get up with some splashing, if the 

 weather is calm, but they rise quickly, and, as Millais says, are apt to circle a sheet of 

 water many times before leaving it. 



Association with other Species. Not especially sociable with other species, 

 it is found in various places mixed with Pochard, White-eyes, Scaup and particu- 

 larly Golden-eyes, although flocks for the most part keep their identity. Several 

 writers have noticed how gulls have in places become regularly parasitic on Tufted 

 Ducks, swooping at them and forcing them to drop food which they have brought 

 up from the bottom (Naumann, 1896-1905; Massingham, 1921). Coots also follow 

 them about and "profit by their labors," picking from the surface of the water such 

 food as is stirred up by the submerged ducks (Ingram, 1921). A nest with six Tufted's 

 eggs and one egg of the Pochard was mentioned by Seebohm (1885). 



Voice. It seems that few writers have correctly described the voice of the male, 

 which as a matter of fact is almost indescribable in print and is heard only in the 

 breeding time. I remember giving up as hopeless the attempt to render the sounds 

 into words, but S. E. Brock (1912) has come near to it. He says, "At frequent inter- 

 vals the beautiful note — a soft, liquid, several-syllabled utterance, rarely penetrat- 

 ing to any distance — is uttered, commonly in chorus by several birds together." 

 Millais calls it a low gentle whistle something like the word hoi and "well-nigh im- 

 possible to express." Heinroth says he has never heard the males make any sound, 

 which is not surprising, for one has to be very close, because the note (if such it may 

 be called) does not carry much farther than the gentle coo of the male Scaup. 



Females have the rough, harsh korr, Jcorr, familiar in so many diving ducks. Mil- 

 lais states that this cry is uttered by both sexes but I do not know of any Pochards 

 or Scaups where the male has a note at all resembling the female's. 



The trachea, described by Latham and Romsey (1798), Yarrell (1884-85) and 

 others, is typical of the diving ducks. The drum-like part resembles the same struc- 

 ture in the Pochard and is, in fact, scarcely to be distinguished from it- But the bony 

 box-like portion of it "is elevated" and not otherwise to be distinguished from that 



