296 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND 



waters, or flighting round us, beating the air with the hardened 

 wing-quills that rattle harshly as they speed pell-mell through 

 space. 



Many is the outing that I have shared with this hardy duck, 

 sometimes crossing the open marsh when the chill north wind 

 blew the crisp and finely-powdered snow into veritable puff- 

 balls of ice-crystals ; sometimes in the last days of April, when 

 the swallows and the very earliest of swifts were hawking 

 insects above the lough, as though offering a reminder that 

 the summer home of the Goldeneye would soon be loosened 

 from a long winter's frost, that he too must journey across the 

 seas, even like frailer folk, to fulfil the traditions of his race by 

 rearing a progeny in some hollow birch-tree in the depths of 

 the Scandinavian forest. In all my studies a-field, I have 

 found the Goldeneye a day feeder j indeed, as soon as the grey 

 morning of a December day breaks, you may depend on finding 

 a little squad of Goldeneyes diving for the shells that are to 

 form their breakfast in the middle of the Eden opposite Castle- 

 town. They are almost always nicely out of shot, but any one 

 murderously disposed will have a fair chance of gratifying his 

 lust to kill if he searches the higher pools, which often hold a 

 stray Goldeneye, and, marking his quarry, runs in when the 

 bird dives, to shoot the poor thing as it comes up and takes 

 wing. Goldeneyes are curiously local ; I have only once seen 

 a flock of these birds on the Wampool and Waver estuary, 

 which I know perhaps more intimately than any other part 

 of the Solway coast, though at the junction of Esk and Eden 

 they occur so commonly. The birds which frequent the Eden 

 follow it up to its head-waters, and occasionally appear at 

 Whin's Pond, the ' decoy pond ' at Lowther, and other likely 

 localities. At a distance from their favourite feeding-grounds 

 they are seldom heard of. They leave us generally in March ; 

 only a few remain until the last days of April. In 1889 a 

 single bird in female dress haunted Monkhill Lough until at 

 any rate the 6th day of May. It was full- winged and shy, nor 

 did it associate with any other fowl, but Goldeneyes are only 

 sociable in my experience with their own kind. On the 16th of 

 March 1889 I saw an old drake Goldeneye chase away a Mallard 



