26 British Diving Ducks 
their necks, cock their tails' up, and rise in a body or a string, coming past the boat within 
gun shot. 
If viewed upwind it is necessary to make several short tacks until the boat is in a 
position to sail directly down on the birds, for if approached on a side-wind they are apt to 
take alarm easily and to pass away out of shot. The best day to shoot Eiders — in fact, any 
of the true sea-ducks — is one when the sea is calm and there is just sufficient wdnd to 
drive the boat along at a pace a little faster to that at which the ducks are moving. They 
are then loath to rise, and keep retreating until they may be sometimes jammed in on the 
rocks, from which they will break towards the boat at very close range. 
The first three seasons I hunted Eiders on the Orkneys, I only obtained two shots at 
second-year males, both of them in a high sea. The first I missed, and the second I 
knocked down but lost ; it was not until several seasons had passed and I had an intimate 
local knowledge of these birds in various other resorts that I succeeded in killing all the 
various plumages I required, and this only after many failures. 
I have killed a few immature Eiders from the double-handed gunning punt, but these 
occasions were rare, for the difficulty was to find Eiders in such a place that a double punt 
could be used at them with safety. In every instance where I have run to them with the 
punt they have shown a complete lack of suspicion of this class of boat, and have allowed me 
to come as near as I wished. I found ten immature male Eiders in Campbelltown Bay, 
Moray Firth, in February 1892, and lay for some months within 20 yards of them. Only 
one was a specimen I desired, so I shot him. On one or two rare occasions I have 
towed my punt to the little isles in the Bring, and twice used it with success at Eiders and 
Velvet-Scoters, and twice in St. Andrews Bay, Fife, although on the second occasion I was 
glad to get back to the lugger, as a nasty sea got up and nearly upset the punt. But for 
wild sea-fowl that cannot be approached by any other method, there is no boat that can vie 
with the double gunning punt, provided the shooter is prepared to undertake some risk. 
In the winter Eiders have few enemies except man, though sea eagles often attack them 
along the coast-line in Norway ; whilst the Great Black-backed Gull has a wonderful eye for 
a "pricked " bird, and will hunt it until it falls a prey owing to exhaustion. In the summer 
Eiders have many enemies in their arctic home, and a few in our islands. Even in the 
Orkneys and Shetlands a few of the young fall a prey to both Lesser and Greater Black- 
backed Gulls ; whilst Richardson's Skua is not wholly above suspicion. In Unst the Great 
Skua has been seen to attack and swallow young Eiders. In Iceland numbers of young 
Eiders are killed by Richardson's Skua, sea-eagles, and a few by the Iceland Falcons. Arctic 
foxes are not numerous here as they are in the Russian islands, Greenland, and Labrador, 
where these animals levy heavy toll on the old birds on the nests as well as the young. 
Polar bears also kill quantities of young Eiders, and will break and eat their eggs. In West 
Greenland the Harp Seal is said to catch Eiders on the water, coming up and seizing them 
from below, and it is possible that the small whale orca gladiator kills a few. In North-east 
Greenland the chief marauder of all sea-birds is the Glaucous Gull, which creates much havoc 
amongst young ducks. 
Certain parasitic insects, as yet unidentified, harbour in the feathers of Eiders, whilst 
Von Limstow gives the following formidable list of parasites that infest the entrails : 
Strongylus modularise Rud ; Strongyhts acutus^ Lundahl ; Tropidocerca inflata, Dies ; 
