GOOSANDER, 
71 
They usually associate in small parties of six or eight. In the 
month of April they disappear, and return again early in Novem- 
ber. Of their particular place and manner of breeding we have no 
account. Mr. Pennant observes that they continue the whole year 
in the Orknies ; and have been shot in the Hebrides or Western 
Islands of Scotland in summer. They are also found in Iceland, 
and Greenland, and are said to breed there ; some asserting that 
they build on trees ; others that they make their nests among the 
rocks. 
The Goosander is a broad, long-bodied, and flat-backed bird. 
It is a great diver, and remains under water for a considerable 
time. It is very shy, and hard to be obtained, unless there is ice 
in the river, at which time it may be approached by stratagem, the 
shooter and his boat being clothed in white, so as to resemble float- 
ing ice. It appears to live chiefly upon fin-fish, which its sharp- 
toothed and hooked bill is admirably calculated for securing. It 
rises from the water with considerable fluttering, its wings being 
small and short ; but when in the air it flies with great swiftness. 
It is a singular circumstance that those Goosanders which are seen 
in the Delaware and Schuylkill, in the vicinity of Philadelphia, are 
principally old males. 
The male Goosander is twenty-six inches in length, and thirty- 
seven inches in breadth; the bill to the angles of the mouth is three 
inches long, nearly an inch thick at the base, strongly toothed on 
both mandibles, the upper mandible with two corresponding rows 
of fine teeth within, the lower divided to the nail, and con- 
nected by a thin elastic membrane, which admits of consider- 
able expansion to facilitate the passage of fish ; nostrils subo- 
vate, broader on the hind part; the bill is black above and 
below, its sides crimson ; the tongue is long, pointed, furnished 
with a double row of papillae running along the middle, and has a 
hairy border; irides golden; the frontlet, lores, area of the ejes, 
and throat, jet black ; head crested, tumid, and of a beautiful 
