no British Diving Ducks 
During the bow movement the male makes a low but quite distinct scraping sound, 
which can only be heard at a distance of a few paces. The view of several males all 
grimacing before one female at the same moment is a very curious one, and represents one 
of the most remarkable displays of courtship exhibited by any birds. 
During the season of love flocks or parties of Red-breasted Mergansers are in a 
constant state of turmoil. Owing to the worrying she receives, each female seeks to escape 
by flight, when the males begin to pursue her, and so the little parties of love-makers keep 
fluttering and splashing from one place to another for hours together, so that we wonder if 
the female at any rate gets any amusement out of this state of affairs, except from the 
commotion she is creating. 
At this season of the year Mergansers go ashore a good deal and spend hours in 
polishing up their feathers. They are very busy birds at all times, but in spring, when not 
fishing, flying, or love-making, they sit on the sandy points or on islands and attend to 
their toilet or sleep a little. 
The nesting places are occasionally to be found in banks, heather, cliff ledges, rabbit- 
holes, or old cairns or ruins near the sea itself, but more often somewhere near fresh-water 
streams or lakes, in dense vegetation, hidden crevices, or in the rocks and peat. Often 
they are situated in deep holes and only rarely in the open. I put a female off her nest out 
of a deep hole in a lava bed in Iceland, which I think is the usual site in Iceland. It may 
almost be said to have been in association with other ducks, for only a few yards away were 
the nests of Scaup and Long-tailed Ducks. 
Both in Iceland and Northern Europe the Red-breasted Merganser has been found to 
make use of the deserted huts of peasants, having entered through broken windows 
(H. J. Pearson). Mr. Heatley Noble informs me that he has generally found the nest in 
Scotland " in thick heather out of sight, but occasionally in the open. I have known as 
many as fifteen eggs in one nest." It is also often found in the grass under bushes. The 
nest is roughly and loosely woven together or merely heaped in a mass of dry grass, sedge, 
twigs, and foliage of different plants or shrubs. 
The site of the nest is never very far away from the water and generally only a few 
paces. The female sits very close and is not easily put off her nest. Blasius states that 
the nest is sometimes placed in high trees, sometimes far from the water in the old nests of 
birds of prey and crows, also in boxes fastened to trees and made from a piece of hollow 
tree branch and provided with an entrance hole. In Scotland in late May (and farther 
north in June) the female lays from seven to twelve eggs and occasionally as many as 
fifteen or sixteen, which she sits on for four weeks. All the nesting habits seem to be very 
similar to other diving ducks, the males deserting the females as soon as they commence 
to sit. 
The female Merganser is the very best of mothers, but they do not all behave with the 
astonishing bravery exhibited by some individuals of this species — sometimes a mother 
will fly a long distance from her small brood and keep nervously croaking and flying in 
small circles, hardly coming within gunshot of a boat. At other times I have pursued a 
family party on lake or river in my canoe, and have seen the mother bird brushing against 
the bow of the boat almost within touching distance of a paddle in her efforts to save her 
young. 
