THE GOOSANDER. 



Mergus merganser, Linnseus. 

 Plate 52. 



Until some forty-five years ago, the accounts of the breeding of this very 

 beautiful duck in Great Britain seem open to doubt, but Macgillivray believed that 

 it nested near Loch Maddy, North Uist, in 1840. It is now known however to 

 breed in various parts of northern Scotland, as well as in Perthshire and Argyll. 

 Elsewhere in the British Islands the Goosander is only known as a winter visitor, 

 and although frequenting estuaries, seems much more at home on rather large and 

 clear, rapid rivers. During summer it inhabits Iceland and Northern Europe south- 

 wards to the lakes of Switzerland, many of the birds moving still farther south in 

 the cold season. In Asia it ranges eastwards to Kamchatka and southwards to 

 China and Japan. In Northern Europe the Goosander breeds in hollow trees or in 

 nesting-boxes put up for the purpose by the peasants, but in Scotland the nest is 

 usually placed in holes among rocks or peat and near running water. The eggs, 

 from seven to twelve or thirteen in number, are creamy-white in colour. 



The food of the Goosander consists almost entirely of small fishes, for the 

 capture of which the saw-like bill, armed with small sharp projections, is beautifully 

 adapted. 



The usual cry of this species is a harsh guttural note. 



Few of our wildfowl approach it in splendour of colouring, and I can think of 

 no more beautiful glimpse of bird life than one I enjoyed on a winter's day many 

 years ago when walking by the Tweed near Coldstream, of a flock sunning them- 

 selves on the ice-bound margin of the river. 



Lt.-Commander J. G. Millais has kindly furnished me with the following 

 notes on the Goosander : " The only known specimen of this bird in eclipse plumage 

 (killed in Finmark) was figured in my work on the Natural History of British 

 Diving Ducks. In September 1915 I killed four specimens in full eclipse in North- 

 eastern Europe. At this season they are the most unapproachable of all water 

 birds. As soon as the young are hatched, the adult males leave the breeding ground 

 and make their way to the sea in parties in July, and then choose places on the 

 coast where it is almost impossible to approach them without being observed. I 

 have often seen them rise at a distance of half a mile. Drakes of all species are shy 

 when in the eclipse dress, but Goosanders are the shyest of all birds, not excepting 

 the Wild Geese." 



HI. 57 H 



