4 
50 British Diving Ducks 
at Patshull, Mr. Gerald Legge sends me the following note: "April 4, 191 2. — The Tufted 
are coming in every day now ; they are later than last year, when the bulk of them arrived 
April I. This year there were only three pairs here on April i, and now (April 4) there are 
eleven pairs as against seventeen pairs that bred here last year. The adult drakes left here 
June 26, 1910, and June 24, 191 1." 
Cumberland. — First bred in 1888 (Zool., 1888, p. 330). 
Devon. — Regular visitor, and possibly breeds occasionally (D' Urban and Mathew, 
p. 232, and Appendix ix. p. 23). 
Essex. — Probably breeds (M. Christy, l^tct. Hist, of Essex). 
Cheshire. — It has bred within the last four years (Coward and Oldham, Vert. Fauna of 
Cheshire, i. p. 339). In November 1910 and 191 1 I saw numbers of Tufted Ducks in the 
Park at Tatton and at the Mere, and was told by the keepers that the species bred there 
regularly. They also breed in other lakes in the neighbourhood of Knutsford. 
Hertfordshire. — Nests regularly. (See Country Life, May 14, 1910.) 
Surrey. — Mr. J. Bucknill says he could find no record of its nesting [Birds of Surrey, 
p. 239), but Mr. P. F. Bunyard records [British Birds, vol. vi. p. 158) that on June 18, 
191 2, he saw a pair of Tufted Ducks, accompanied by nine newly hatched young, on a 
Surrey pond. 
Middlesex. — The species is common in the London parks, where full-winged females 
nest freely. Occasionally flocks visit the Zoological Gardens, where there are always 
pinioned birds, and in 1910 a full-winged female stayed on the Three-Island Pond and 
nested there, bringing off some half-dozen ducklings (Seth-Smith). 
Bedfordshire. — Three pairs bred in 191 1, and probably in the two previous years, on a 
private sheet of water (Fred. Sharman, Brit. Birds, vol. v. p. 114). Now breeds regularly 
at Woburn (J. G. M.). Mr. Steele Elliott writes that it bred at Luton Hoo Park in 1894 
(Birds of Bedfordshire). 
Wales. — It breeds in Anglesey (Coward and Oldham, ZooL, 1905, pp. 229, 423; 
Forrest, Vert Fauna of North Wales, p. 287). Possibly it also breeds in Merioneth 
(Forrest, Vert Fauna of North Wales, p. 288). 
Scotland. — -James Manderstone, boatman to the late Sir Graham Montgomery, at Loch 
Leven, Kinross, for over seventy years, told me that he always remembered the Tufted Duck 
as resident and breeding there. He also stated that his father, who was there for sixty 
years, could always recollect them. This takes us back to the middle of the eighteenth 
century, and it is more than probable that the Tufted Duck has been there for many cen- 
turies. It is strange that prior to 1870 the bird should have been so local in its breeding 
habitat, for it was always well known as a spring and winter visitor to the lakes and 
estuaries of Southern Scotland, the West Coast, and the Hebrides (see Gray, Birds of the 
West of Scotland, and others). Its remarkable spread throughout Scotland may be dated from 
the year 1875, when Mr. A. D. Brooke recorded it as breeding at Butterston Loch, near 
Dunkeld (see Ibis, 1875, p. 514). About this time my parents were living at Dunkeld, and 
we went one day to see the birds, in which I took much interest. There were then about 
nine or ten pairs on the Lochs of the Lows, as they were called. The next instance I 
noted of this duck breeding in Perthshire was in 1877, when Mr. P. D. Malloch killed a 
pair and took the nest and eggs on the Lake of Dupplin, near Perth. From this date the 
