2 
SCAUP. 
while searching for food, it was evident that the greater number, if not the whole, were paired, the ducks 
and drakes in every instance keeping company, and one or the other with croaking notes occasionally 
resenting a near approach from another couple. 
After many attempts to ascertain the truth, I am unable to state with certainty that Scaups rear 
their young in this country ; though failing to detect their nests after most careful watching, I 
remarked that a few pairs occasionally remained all through the summer in the Highlands. I often 
noticed two old drake Scaups, late in the spring of 1869, on Loch Slyn, in the east of Ross-shire; they 
also resorted to a small muddy rush-grown piece of water, with which the loch is connected by a narrow 
stream of about a mile in length, just navigable for a single punt. The swamps and stunted plantations, 
rank with moist undergrowth, around this paradise for birds were frequented by many kinds of fowl ; and I 
have little doubt that the nests of more than one species, supposed to be only Avinter migrants to our 
shores, might in those days have been detected, had sufficient time been devoted to the search. During the 
course of a thorough exploration of this locality in the first week in June, I distinctly saw a female 
Scaup crossing the marshes on wing, though the drakes, as far as I was able to ascertain, were absent; 
on the following day this bird, or another of the same species, was seen on the water in the early 
morning and again towards evening. 
While travelling by rail to Fearn, on a visit to the haunts of the Scaup about Loch Slyn, 
I was much amused at the manner in which one of the fishwives was ol)served to provide for the 
safety of her railway ticket while on her rounds. The train had just pulled up at a small station, 
when a bright-looking lassie, in the familiar garb of the fishing-population, alighted, and lowering her 
well-laden creel to the platform, proceeded to divide her return ticket into the two halves. She next 
lifted one foot on to the top of the basket, and raised her dark blue skirt ; then turning down her stocking, 
she carefully enveloped one half of the ticket in two or three folds taken round the top. Having completed 
this little arrangement to her satisfaction, she swung the dripping basket over her back, and turning 
towards the outlet-door, delivered up to the collector the requisite portion of the ticket, and started 
off to dispose of her load of baddies. 
