Long-tailed Duck 129 
being killed with a pea-rifle. Some of these would be eaten directly, but most of them are 
salted down for future use." 
• There seems no reason why numbers like this should be killed in this country, for 
these ducks are as unpalatable as other sea-ducks, and only a few are required by the 
naturalist wild-fowler. Yet I know of two places where a very large number of these ducks 
could be killed in winter over decoys. 
On the east coast of North America numbers of these ducks are shot to decoys, and 
calls are made to attract them. "These birds are easily decoyed," says Leonard Sanford, 
{The Waterfowl Family, p. 156), "and, by imitating their note, are often turned from their 
course and called in. They drop among the stool with a sociable grunt. You wait for 
them to rise, but they may think differently, and just disappear, coming to the surface and 
taking wing out of range." 
The behaviour of young Long-tailed Ducks when they first arrive in these islands, and 
even for some weeks afterwards, is altogether different from the adults, and the fact that 
they will not rise to wing, but prefer to escape by swimming away and diving, shows a 
curious difference of habit from any other species. When first viewed, a flock of immatures 
appears to be very dense. They swim almost touching one another, and if a " family" shot 
is obtained by the pot-hunter, it may cause great execution. When approached within 
twenty yards and fired at, the flock either dives or separates singly or into small parties, 
which again break up and scatter. Once thoroughly alarmed, these immatures take good 
care of themselves, but their somewhat unaccountable habit of not taking to wing is all the 
more remarkable since they are fully capable of flight after their long journey from the 
north. I have noticed this "bunching" habit of the immatures to continue throughout a 
whole winter if the flock find suitable feeding grounds, and, as far as I could observe, I 
never saw the Fort George flock, previously referred to, once take to wing the whole autumn 
or winter, either of their own accord to change their feeding ground, or to avoid the gunners 
who frequently attacked them. 
This habit of theirs, however, may be solely induced by local conditions, for the birds 
may have found that there are no other suitable feeding grounds in the vicinity, for on 
the other hand I have, both in the Forth and Eden estuaries, seen immatures in January 
coming in all day from the open sea and flying past the outer mussel banks to some river 
bays, where they found their food. All Scandinavian, German, and American gunners, 
however, agree as to the tameness of this species, and the ease with which young birds may 
be shot amongst ice, or when passing necks of land on their way to feeding grounds. 
Winged birds of this species are not easy to recover unless shot again after the first dive, 
but they tire sooner than either Eider or Scoter, and can be obtained with perseverance. If 
otherwise wounded they often get into the sea-ware at the bottom and amongst floating 
kelp and are lost. 
Large quantities of these ducks are caught in the shallows of the Baltic and the North 
Sea and in the estuaries of rivers, in large wide-meshed nets stretched in squares on stakes, 
in a horizontal position, below the surface. They are also sometimes caught in the large 
loose nets set for fish and hanging vertically in the water, and I have seen them captured in 
the salmon nets set in the Buddon Ness (Forfar) and Tents Muir (Fife) coasts. Many 
thousands of these ducks are captured in the waters round Fehmarn and the Bay of Neu- 
VOL. I. T, 
