GOLDEN-EYE 313 



The animal food is largely mollusks, crustaceans and insects. Both univalve and 

 bivalve shellfish are consumed, and the Whistler feeds to a slight extent upon some 

 of the commercial varieties, such as the scallop and the northwestern oyster. In 

 fresh water, crayfishes, water beetles, snails, and the immature stages of two-winged 

 flies, dragon-flies, may -flies, and caddis-flies are staple foods, and in salt water, crabs, 

 barnacles, and periwinkles. A few small fishes are sometimes captured (W. L. 

 McAfee, MS. notes). 



To mention some of this food a little more in detail, it is well to note small fish and 

 trout fry (O. W. Knight, 1908), salmon spawn on the Cumberland and Derwent 

 Rivers in England, where this duck has been shot with spawn oozing from its bill 

 (Thomas Hartley, in London Field, 1917, p. 152; also p. 226). In such places they 

 are said to dig on the spawning beds with their feet and then drop down stream and 

 eat the disturbed ova. (Barrow's Golden-eye also has been found guilty of eating 

 salmon eggs in British Columbia.) Willett (1921) took some in March in south- 

 eastern Alaska which had herring spawn in their crops. Of shells and other aquatic 

 animal food are mentioned Lacuna vincta and Margarita helicina in Maine (Norton, 

 1909) ; small crustaceans, as Daphnia pulex on the upper Rhine (W. and T. Heus- 

 sler, 1896), shells of Physa fontinalis and water larvae of Neuroptera (Cordeaux, 

 1896) and the broken shells of little clams, My a arenaria, in San Pablo Bay, Cali- 

 fornia (Grinnell, Bryant and Storer, 1918). Fatio (1904) gives a detailed list of the 

 winter food in Switzerland and also mentions a few small fish (Cottus gobio). Unusual 

 food, such as leeches in a fledgling in the month of July in Montenegro, was noticed 

 by Reiser and von Fiihrer (1896). 



Insect larvae (Phryganeidw) , fish, frogs and frog larvae, shellfish and shrimplike 

 animals of the genera Palamion and Crangon are common according to Naumann. 

 A detailed list of the food in Belfast Bay is given by W. Thompson (1851). Cray- 

 fish were found by Audubon in the stomachs of some shot near Henderson, Kentucky. 



A habit of the Golden-eye sometimes observed, is to swim along with its head im- 

 mersed looking beneath the surface preparatory to diving, just as we sometimes see 

 grebes, loons and mergansers do. It can also get food without diving at all and one 

 which W. Brewster watched for an hour feeding in shallow water simply by swim- 

 ming about with its head under water was found later on dissection to be crammed 

 full of water beetles. 



A stomach which I got in autumn at Wenham, Massachusetts, contained 94 per 

 cent vegetable matter and only 6 per cent animal matter: seeds of pond-weed, water- 

 lily, bayberry, bur-reed, buds and roots of wild celery and bits of water-boatmen and 

 dragon-fly nymphs. Even the seeds of Zostera (eel-grass) are sometimes eaten 

 (Norton, 1909). Two stomachs collected in Alberta in June were more than three- 

 fourths filled with vegetable matter, namely, the seeds of yellow water-lily and bur- 

 reed, with a few of pond-weed, coontail, and milfoil. Their animal content was 



