WILDFOWL AND WILDFOWLING 
moving shoals. Thus, by careful watching with the glass, one may often 
see mergansers or cormorants systematically swimming the deeps with 
heads submerged, only their low fiat backs in sight, and almost awash. 
Presently follows a sort of convulsive action — the low black back has 
disappeared, and not a ripple left behind. But in shallower water — say 
some tidal channel, five or six feet in depth — ^the merganser (and 
goosander, too, in analogous situation) backs its own sub-aquatic powers 
entirely unaided by eye. Watch those six — for an instant, a single long 
slim neck rises to its full height ; then, without any body -movement, 
the merganser plunges head first to catch what he can — sand-launce, 
flounders, shrimps not despised. 
Incidentally it may be here recorded that both eider-ducks and 
cormorants, if threatened with sudden danger, can dive from the wing. 
I have seen two, three, or more, eiders, forming part of a pack of six, 
ten, or a score, flying several yards high, suddenly plunge vertically into 
the sea upon a shot being fired at a short distance — though not at them. 
In the Arctic also, I remember guillemots diving from the wing when 
attacked by the pirate skuas {Stercorarius crepidatus). 
The big sea-divers (Colymbi) possess the power of submerging the 
whole body when alarmed, and one sees them, with grebes and cormor- 
ants, steaming full speed ahead, with nothing in sight but the head and 
neck — the back feathers just awash. All the sea-divers may be known 
by their thick erect necks, which in winter plumage show three -fourths 
white, and (at short distance) by the sharp -pointed head and beak carried 
at a rigid right angle. Moreover they are always single, as are also the 
grebes. They swim as low as mergansers; but the latter are, of course, 
recognizable at a glance by their long, slim necks, almost snake -like, 
and by their tufted heads. 
As for wild geese, the Brent is by far the most numerous, and, being 
strictly marine in its haunts, affords the finest sport of all British wild- 
fowl to the punt-gunner. The descriptions already given leave nothing 
further to be said. 
The Bernacle goose frequents the West Coast and Ireland ; but as I have 
had no personal acquaintance with it, I am not qualified to write anything 
about it. 
Grey geese constitute a second group, chiefly (if not exclusively) inland - 
feeders. There are four species of these — or five, if we include A user 
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