88 British Diving Ducks 
Firth. The first day in 1890 I went after the duck was a stormy one, so I drove to 
Loch Flemington, and spied four old male Golden-Eye. My groom was an accomplished 
" mover of ducks," and scared them so successfully that I killed three out of the four as 
they left the lake. In the evening of the same day I tried an unsuccessful stalk at Wigeon 
in Campbeltown Bay, and whilst poling home I killed three more old male Golden-Eye. 
A strange day, it seemed, to shoot as many old males of this duck as I had done in the 
previous four seasons. After this I seldom fired at Golden-Eyes, though many a good 
shot at Wigeon they ruined for me. 
In Ireland the Golden-Eye is common, and very generally distributed on all 
estuaries and large sheets of inland waters such as Lough Neagh. There they are mostly 
seen in small parties, and seldom in large flocks, except when about to commence the 
migration. Thompson speaks of seeing 150 to 200 unmixed with other species, whilst 
Sir R. Payne Gallwey has seen 200 together without a single old male amongst them. 
Mr. Williams has informed me that he considers the old males rare in Ireland, as he 
has seldom had specimens to mount. In Ireland, as in Scotland, Golden-Eye occasionally 
stay throughout the summer, and have been noticed on Lough Swilly in July (Ussher 
and Warren, Birds of Ireland, p. 209). 
The Golden-Eye is not quite so exclusively marine in its habits as the Scaup. Its 
favourite resorts are brackish or saltwater estuaries, the mouths of large tidal rivers, 
and large inland lakes. To the latter they come mostly on migration, and visitors to 
such places are generally single birds or small parties of immatures. These birds seem 
to have a distinct preference for places where both salt and fresh or brackish water are 
to be found. They like to rest part of the day or night on one or the other, more 
generally staying at sea by day or coming in at flight, generally very high, to brackish 
lagoons or freshwater lakes or estuaries at night to feed. Where such places exist in 
the British Isles they are always attractive to Golden-Eye, which are somewhat restive 
and suspicious little ducks, except in certain spots where they are immune from the gunner, 
and those are rare indeed. 
The Golden-Eye certainly suffers somewhat in very severe winters, but even in such 
winters of great cold as 1881, 1884, 1894-95, I have not noticed that these birds left 
their regular winter haunts. In 1894 I saw numbers of Golden-Eye in open spaces of water 
on the Upper Tay, when that river presented the appearance of the Polar regions. They 
were diving away happily for their food in a temperature below zero, whilst surface-feeding 
ducks and Pochards sat miserable and starving. 
The authors of the Water-fowl Family (p. 144) bear testimony that this duck will 
stand privations that cause other ducks distress. "We associate this sprightly duck 
with cold weather. The smallest ice-holes, when all the bays and lakes are frozen, give 
it a chance for a livelihood. The Golden-Eye remains fat and contented under these 
circumstances, when other members of the duck family quickly show the results of 
starvation rations." In the New Naumann we are told how Golden-Eye behave on 
migration and during the severer climatic conditions of the Continent. 
The autumn migration seldom begins before the beginning of November even on the Baltic ; 
at places where they spend the winter in great flocks, it is not often that you see them before the 
end of the month. Many migrate along the coast of the North Sea and in a south-westerly direction 
