Tufted Duck 
6i 
her as she swims. If disturbed by man, she will fly a short distance and dive, when the 
young, even if very small, at once imitate her movements. In a very few days the young 
are expert divers. During the first days of life the young are largely fed by the mother, 
or, to speak more correctly, have food placed before them by the parent, who obtains it 
from the bottom, and then breaks it up, when it is at once swallowed by the hungry brood. 
All the time she is so engaged the latter are busy catching flies and diptera on the surface 
as they swim along. 
Young Tufted Ducks begin to dive very soon after they enter the water. Mr. Wormald 
allows his young birds to enter a pond and seek for food as soon as they are hatched. As 
instancing their lack of knowledge in the art of diving and their quick acceptance of this 
method of gaining their food, Mr. J. Whitaker tells me the following interesting fact, 
which he noticed at Rain worth in the summer of 191 2. A female Tufted Duck led her 
bunch of young ones, which had just been hatched, to the middle of a pond. She then 
dived immediately ; the young rushed in every direction on the surface of the water, evidently 
under the impression that they had lost their mother. She reappeared in a minute, 
however, and all the brood hurried to her side. At the next dive they did not appear 
to be so frightened, but looked about waiting for her reappearance. The third time she 
dived two of the young ones copied her movements, and in a very short period the whole 
of the family were diving with their mother in quite professional fashion. This little 
incident shows how quickly education may be completed in birds whose instincts naturally 
trend in certain directions. 
At first the young appear very black, but in a few days they look brownish grey, 
till by the end of August they are somewhat difficult to distinguish from the mother. The 
adult females stay with the young until they can fly, when all gradually work together and 
are joined by the adult males in the usual winter resorts in October. On Loch Leven the 
adult females and young do not leave the loch at all during the first year, and this probably 
holds good on all breeding resorts which are also winter habitats, whereas females and 
young that have passed the summer on small lochs, lakes, and ponds generally leave in 
September for larger sheets of water, their places being taken by other migratory duck, 
which in turn also pass on. 
Owing to their facility in diving, Tufted Ducks suffer little from birds of prey, which 
seldom molest birds living on the water or flying immediately over it. Foxes catch a few 
on their nests and possibly others, but their chief enemy in Scotland is the Hooded Crow, 
which annually destroys thousands of ducks' nests. Mr. Malloch tells me that one day, 
when fishing on Loch Leven, he saw a Hoodie watching a Tufted on its nest. Immediately 
the mother left her nest, doubtless to get some food, the marauder swooped down and 
immediately broke every egg, carrying off one on its bill. Gulls also destroy a few nests 
that are placed in exposed situations. 
Certain parasitic insects are found in the feathers, such as Docophorus obtusus and 
Docophorus icterodes (Nitzsch), whilst in the intestines are worms similar to those found 
in the Pochard, namely, Ascaris fuligtdcs- (Gm.), Strongylus modularis (Rud.), Strongylus 
acMtus (Lundahl), EchinorynchMs polymorphus (Brens), Distomum oxyurmn (Creplin), 
Distomum globulus (Rud.), Distomum echinatum (Zed.), Monosfomum attenuatum (Rud.), 
Taenia megalops (Nitzsch), Taenia leavis (Bloch), Taenia sinuosa (Zed.), Taenia trilineata 
