THE RED-BREASTED MERGANSER. 
163 
and of the great rapidity with which they ran and dived. Although 
their foster-parent was very assiduous in her attention to them, 
they proved, after the first three days, quite indifferent to her ; 
came to the yard with the poultry, and ate potatoes freely. 
When visiting the islands of Strangford Lough, on the 20th and 
21st of June, 1832, I saw two pair of these birds, each pair 
flying in company. The species was said, by intelligent farmers 
who accompanied us, to breed here, on Island Mahee, Island 
Eeagh, and Scatrick. One of our party had often found their 
nests, which he described as situated in “ scraggy” places, or 
where there is some short, thick brushwood : when he has ap- 
proached the nest, in the absence of the parent, the young birds 
have left it, and run towards him. The name for these birds, 
here, is scale-duck, which my friend, as has been stated, believed to 
apply to the shell-duck, when he sought to obtain the eggs from 
this locality. The birds noticed under Goosander (the next species 
to be treated of), by the latter of the two names, and said to breed 
about the river Shannon, are probably M. serrator. Sir William 
Jardine remarks, in one of the excellent notes to his edition of 
Wilson's f American Ornithology/ that : — “ In Hudson's Bay 
(according to Hearne) they are called shelldrakes ; the name by 
which they are also distinguished by the common people in all 
the rivers of the south of Scotland" (vol. iii. p. 90). Audu- 
bon, too, informs us that “ the red-breasted merganser is best 
known through the United States by the name of shelldrake" 
(vol. v. p. 93). 
I have met with the red-breasted merganser in Strangford 
Lough different times in summer since the date last mentioned ; 
but it will be sufficient to give the following observations, made 
by Mr. J. E. Garrett in 1849. He remarks : — “ On the 3rd of 
June I saw three pair at Island Gabbogh. The boatman (who is 
a shooter in winter and a fisherman in summer) showed me a 
spot on the island where he had, two or three years ago, caught 
a ' scale-duck ' on her nest, containing twelve eggs. On the 
smaller Bird Island I saw another pair of mergansers, but could 
not find their nest. At Chapel Island I discovered a nest of 
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