GOLDEN-EYE 309 



by young flocks during autumn migration. Millais speaks of places on the coast 

 of Great Britain where they stay at sea by day and come in to feed at night on 

 brackish lagoons or fresh-water lakes. This is certainly contrary to my experience 

 and that of many others (A. Chapman, 1889; etc.). For the rest, their day travels 

 are governed largely by tides for they like to feed high up in salt-water creeks and 

 estuaries during the flood, and over flats which at low tide are bare. 



Gait, Swimming, Diving, Perching. One almost never sees these ducks on 

 shore during the autumn and winter. If they do come to land it is on some isolated 

 sandbar or edge of ice when danger seems remote. Their gait is extremely erect and 

 waddling and they do not attempt to fly from land. In the breeding time they are 

 at home amongst trees but even then they do not seem to perch often for they fly 

 directly to and from the nest-hole and always enter it from the air. Merrikallis 

 (quoted in Bull. British Ornith. Club, vol. 40, p. 152, 1920), however, says that in 

 Lapland they are often seen perching on the artificial nesting boxes or on the limbs 

 of spruce trees. Millais's remark that the females walk to the nesting place refers 

 only to those (I should say wholly exceptional) cases where this duck lays its eggs on 

 the ground. Audubon's account of the five Golden-eyes (?) that kept alighting in a 

 sycamore tree over a ford in Kentucky is an experience which does not seem ever to 

 have been repeated. 



This bird has a rather typical swimming posture, with head stretched forward as 

 if looking down into the water, a pose which often identifies it a very long way off. 

 The coarse round head sometimes greatly puffed out and the high stubby bill are 

 excellent field-marks when little else can be made out. 



When "on feed" or alarmed and swimming away from a danger-point the body 

 is deep in the water, the tail dragging or submerged and the bird ready for an in- 

 stantaneous dive or jump. Ji in this position, they can and often do avoid shot at 

 longish ranges by diving at the flash of a gun, but if shot at before they are warned 

 of danger, and while swimming buoyantly, they cannot possibly escape a charge of 

 shot with smokeless powder behind it. 



I do not know of any observations that would give a correct idea of the maximum 

 depth at which the Golden-eye can feed. Millais places it at eighteen to twenty feet 

 which I should say is nearly correct while Eaton's (1910) estimate of "upward of 

 thirty-five feet" would appear to be quite improbable. The greatest depth which 

 Dewar (1924) found was thirteen feet. The most favorable waters are no doubt 

 those between three and ten feet. The feeding birds disappear with a rapid push of 

 the feet and go down at a steep angle or in circles, with the tail spread and the wings 

 closed or nearly closed. Progress is by the feet alone, these being kicked out at a wide 

 angle from the body; almost it would seem at a right angle. Progress under water 

 was estimated at at least one foot per second (Afford, 1920), and time under water 



