200 THE BIRDS OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



pond at Lilford, but always found them difficult to 

 keep alive for any length of time. A female in the 

 Zoological Gardens was kept alive for some time 

 entirely apon small living fishes. 



193. VELVET SCOTER. 



(Edemia fusca. 



I have no positive record of a capture of this 

 species in Northamptonshire, but have no doubt as 

 to one occurrence at least in the county, from the 

 information given to me by my brother, who told me 

 that on November 24, 1877, he saw a large bird 

 which, for a moment, he took to be a Blackcock, rise 

 from a thick bed of flags and sedge at the lower end 

 of our Bridge-Island, at a very short distance from 

 the house at Lilford ; as soon as the bu'd was well 

 on the wing, he saw that it was a Duck of a species 

 that he had never before seen alive, and as he de- 

 scribed it as being entirely black with the exception 

 of a white bar on each wing, I think that my readers 

 will agree with me that I am justified in recording 

 an old male Velvet Scoter as a visitor to Northamp 

 tonshire. This species, although well known on our 

 coasts, is very much rarer than the Common Scoter, 

 my own acquaintance with it on British waters is 

 entirely confined to the northern shores of the 

 Firth of Forth during the month of January 1856. 

 I spent many hours in watching small flocks of these 

 Ducks di^dng and playing, well out of gunshot range, 

 off the rocks in the neighbourhood of Wemyss Castle, 

 where I was a guest at the time of which I write. 

 By great luck I managed to send a rifle-ball through 



