298 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND 



LONG-TAILED DUCK. 



Harelda glacialis (L.). 



The Long-tailed Duck is quite a rare bird in the sounds and 

 estuaries of Morecambe Bay. Very few of the local sportsmen 

 have met with it in any stage of plumage. One of the number, 

 Mr. H. Arnold, killed a young Long- tailed Duck in the Bay at 

 Arnbarrow on November 14th, 1876 ; this I saw at his house. 

 More recently, I found a very handsome old male in the posses- 

 sion of Mr. Murray of Carnforth, from whom I learnt that it was 

 shot in the Bay on the 14th of February 1884. This is the 

 only full-dressed drake that can be vouched for as having been 

 secured at any time on the N.W. coast of England. In female 

 or immature plumage it has occurred a good many times, 

 although at all times one of the rarest of our wild-fowl, and 

 unknown hitherto upon the larger lakes of the interior. At 

 Ravenglass, Dr. Parker obtained a single bird out of a flock of 

 four, in November 1879. Mr. Harris recollects a similar bird 

 having been killed on the Derwent, and Mr. W. Hodgson, 

 A.L.S., answers for another killed on the Ellen in 1855. 

 Yarrell states in the third edition of his British Birds that 

 T. C. Heysham obtained this species on the coast of Cumber- 

 land, and so he undoubtedly did, on two occasions. The earlier 

 instance is mentioned in a letter written on Nov. 26th, 1834, 

 to Henry Doubleday ; Heysham remarking : ' The only novelty 

 that has occurred to me since my return to Carlisle is a young 

 specimen of the Long-tailed Duck, the first, I believe, that has 

 been detected in the neighbourhood.' He notes on a loose 

 scrap, headed Long-tailed Duck: 'Oct. 23, 1850, Townson this 

 day brought here two young birds of this species, which he had 

 shot on the Eden, near King Garth.' Townson was a Carlisle bird- 

 stuffer. These were the first and last heard of near Carlisle 

 for many a long day. At length, after a lapse of thirty-four 

 years, I fell in with a handsome drake on Monkhill Lough. 

 Readers of the Birds of Cumberland will recall how, on one 

 occasion, when sheltering from a storm of sleet, crouched behind 

 a bush at the water edge, I was charmed to see a Long-tailed 

 Duck fly up and alight upon the water within thirty-five or 



