376 Ornithological Observations and Reflections in Shetland. 
amidst which she appeared and disappeared, now mounting, 
now in a gulf, like a piece of floating brown seaweed. Sport 
of the waves, she made the waves her sport, and whenever 
amidst them, the glasses caught her for a moment turning her 
from a speck of no meaning, into a shaped thing with life and 
expression, they showed her to be serenely calm and peaceful, 
so much indeed, like a ‘bird of calm sitting, brooding on the 
charmed wave,’ that the wild commotion around her seemed 
for a moment to hush itself and fall into harmony with the 
picture which her appearance so strongly suggested. 
The Eider Duck is stated to be a purely animal feeder, but 
this I may doubt on the evidence. The bird in question came 
right into the mouth of the little inlet where I was watching, 
and there she again and again, laid hold of the long brown 
seaweed, as it was floated up towards the surface of the waves 
from the rocks where it grew below. She would bob, tail 
upwards, like the Common Duck of our ponds, and seizing a 
piece which she could just reach in this attitude, and which 
obviously offered resistance, gave it a violent pull. What 
could it have been but the seaweed which the waves, as they 
troughed themselves, made visible, either on or but just 
beneath the surface, thus giving her the opportunity of which 
she, each time, availed herself of seizing one of the long ribbons 
by its end, so that by the re-swelling up again of the vortex, 
she got more purchase upon it than she would have had by 
diving, which last she did much more rarely, though as to the 
habit born ? But, besides this, to leave no doubt whatever on 
the object of her quest, she several times swam to where a 
mass of this same brown seaweed lay on the water, seized it in 
her bill, pulled and nibbled at it. Now nothing in the shape 
of limpet or periwinkle — or, in fact anything so far as I have 
been able to make out — adheres to the smooth broad blades of 
this fresh-growing brown seaweed, and therefore, as it' seems 
to me, this Eider Duck must have been attacking it for its own 
sake. I could see the smooth shining fronds clearly enough 
through the glasses. They appeared quite clean and naked as 
ever, nor did the actions of the bird suggest any picking off 
process: They appeared to me more to suggest that she was 
nibbling at the seaweed though I was unable positively to 
make out that she swallowed any. 
Since coming here I have onty twice seen the male Eider 
Duck — three or four together and a single one — on each 
occasion flving. The females are more numerous, but by 
no means abundant either, nor have I seen more than three 
together. 
Though Shags, either when disturbed or otherwise, generally 
fly directly down from where they are standing, to the sea, or, 
at most, sweep a little over it before alighting, yet sometimes 
Naturalist 
