308 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND 



waters which it frequents and which must be well supplied with 

 fish, particularly salmonidce, are rare or not to be found where 

 the Goosander is wanting. Upon the coast-line it is a local 

 bird, more often found in Walney Channel than elsewhere in 

 Morecambe Bay. It frequents Ravenglass irregularly, but 

 shuns the bleak open coast from Drigg to Silloth, so that it has 

 rarely been obtained even on the more sheltered estuary of 

 Wampool and Waver. But if it is not partial to the open sea, 

 it is probably because it cannot so easily obtain in salt water a 

 regular supply of the trout and young salmon upon which it 

 prefers to diet. East of Bowness on Solway it occurs pretty 

 commonly, singly and in small parties, between November and 

 March, being then distributed along the tideway from Glasson 

 to the estuary banks of the Esk and Eden, both of which rivers 

 it frequents seasonally, flying up the Eden to the neighbour- 

 hood of Penrith and Appleby. Dr. Heysham found that birds 

 in female dress were much more numerous than adult males ; 

 such is still the case. Though I have examined a fair number 

 of grey males which possessed the black nuchal collar, the only 

 bird that I have seen, obtained when actually changing, in the 

 spring, from the grey dress into the black and cream livery of 

 the old male, was shot at Haweswater early in March 1891. 

 The Goosander is not partial to the sandy estuaries of Wampool 

 and Waver, as already remarked, but prefers the rocky and 

 rapid pools of the Eden, and chiefly dives for its prey in deep 

 gravelly holes. It is a clever diver ; when winged it is some- 

 times, though rarely, secured by the punt-gunners, who give 

 chase to such cripples when the tide has ebbed, and left the 

 central portions of the Solway Firth a wilderness of flat sand, 

 the banks stretching away for several miles to the westward. 

 It is sometimes eaten. I have heard its flesh pronounced to be 

 1 quite as good as grey duck ' (i.e. Mallard). In the Field of 

 October 4, 1890, Mr. Wrigley records that two Goosanders were 

 shot that year on the Lancashire coast at Formby on September 

 27, two days earlier than our earliest date, which relates to a 

 young bird shot on the Eden on the 29th of September 1883, 

 and a week earlier than our second earliest date of arrival, 

 which is that of a bird in female dress shot on the Eden 



