8o British Diving Ducks 
seen and shot were immatures. Thus we see that in the case of the Scaup, as in all the 
other diving ducks, there is a defined area frequented by adults and young, and other 
places resorted to by both. The nature of the locality according to age is always the 
same year after year. 
The flesh of the Scaup is quite eatable in summer, especially in the case of young 
birds that have not yet been to the sea, but in winter, when they are chiefly shot, it has 
always seemed to me to be a bird quite unfit for human food. The diet of cockles 
and mussels gives all diving ducks a rank and even rancid flavour, and a man must 
indeed have a curious palate that can appreciate such stuff. One authority says that 
"it can be tempered enough to make its taste bearable" by treating the carcass with 
vinegar, ''smoking" it, and stuffing it with carrots. When I am reduced to eating a 
Scaup in this fashion my gun will indeed be rusty and the Wigeon and Mallard 
extinct. 
Mr. H. E. Robinson {Field) states that he has eaten Scaup shot on Loch Stenness, 
Orkney, that were "as good as any hand-reared Mallard." Whilst agreeing with that 
writer that "it is simply a matter of feeding whether Scaup are fit for food or not," 
I may state that I have shot many Scaup on Loch Stenness in winter and always marvelled 
how the natives could thank me when I offered them the birds for dinner. I have shot 
young Scaup on Loch Stenness, just after they arrived in early September, that were 
quite eatable. 
American writers agree that when feeding on vegetable matter and various grasses 
the Scaup is an excellent bird for the table, but when the food is barnacles and Crustacea it 
is quite uneatable. 
In Holland and Germany a few Scaup are caught in loose nets hanging vertically 
in the water on their feeding grounds. Naumann gives the following account of the 
method employed in catching them by means of staked nets : — 
They (Scaup) are caught in far greater numbers in places where, in the autumn, they collect in 
immense flocks in company with other diving duck and spend the winter. One such place which is 
prominent amongst others is the Kieleer Fjord, where nets are placed for them at their favourite 
haunts in winter, and where in severe cold thousands are caught, particularly if on account of the ice 
they have gathered at the mouth of rivers flowing into the sea. These nets are large wide-meshed 
squares, stretched on stakes, which stand horizontally about 42 cms. below the surface of the water, 
and the duck get under them in diving, and in rising again can only get the head and neck through 
the meshes, because they only endeavour to find their way out upwards and do not attempt to withdraw 
themselves backwards ; in this way they are soon choked, and when the nets are drawn up all are found 
to be drowned." 
The Scaup may be kept in confinement with success on the same food as that supplied 
to the Tufted and Pochard ducks. I have seen specimens in good health at the Zoological 
Gardens, Woburn, and at Scampston. They do not appear to have bred at any of these 
places, though there seems no reason why they should not do so. On the Continent 
they have hybridised with such species as the Red-crested Pochard and the Ferruginous 
Duck. 
There is a beautiful albino Scaup at Tring, in the collection of the Honourable 
Walter Rothschild. Albinoes or white varieties of any of the diving ducks are extremely 
rare. 
