HARLEQUIN DUCK. 
433 
NA TA TORES. 
ANAT IDJE. 
HARLEQUIN DUCK. 
Fuligula histrionica. 
PLA.TE CXVIII. FIG. II. 
Ornithologists are indebted to Mr. G. C. Atkinson, 
of Newcastle, for the first knowledge of the nest of this 
species. He obtained them during a summer's ramble in 
Iceland; and, whilst visiting the celebrated Geysers, had 
the eggs brought to him, together with the bird, which had 
been shot in rising from them. 
Mr. Proctor informs me, that the Harlequin Duck is by 
no means common in Iceland, where it chiefly frequents 
cascades and rapidly running streams, building its nest, 
which is composed of dry leaves, grass, and reeds, lined 
with down, amongst low bushes and water-growing plants; 
the eggs being from six to eight in number. 
Mr. Audubon, writing of this species, says :—“ On the 
31st of May, I found them breeding on White Head 
Island, and other much smaller places of a similar nature, 
in the same part of the Bay of Fundy. There they place 
their nests under the bushes, or amid the grass, at a dis¬ 
tance of twenty or thirty yards from the water. Farther 
north, in Newfoundland and Labrador, for example, they 
remove from the sea, and betake themselves to small lakes, 
a mile or so in the interior, on the margins of which they 
form their nests beneath the bushes, next to the water. 
F F 2 
