surface before they get clear of it ; and many more (unless when
rising against a strong wind) before they get up about ten or
fifteen yards, at which height they commonly fly up stream.
When once on the wing their flight is strong and fairly rapid,
though not to compare with that of the Smew.
The great bulk of their food is fish, good-sized ones, often
five and six inches long, and, as in the case of the Smew, there are
always plenty of pebbles in their gizzards. I have found a kind
of cray fish and water-insects in some I have examined ; but
mostly they had fed only on fishes from three to six, or nearly
six inches in length.
Of course they catch these entirely by diving, and while at
times where there has been a good-sized party, I have seen them
all disappear en masse. I have more often seen several diving
quite independently of each other, and it seemed to me some
keeping watch while the others dived.
They are very wary birds, and in large rivers (I never myself
saw them on any lake) scarcely approachable ; and yet, if
you are drifting down in a boat trolling and apparently paying
no attention to them, they will often fly over within easy shot,
until, at any rate, you have thus fired at them once or twice.
In the interior, in comparatively narrow streams, it is often easy
to stalk them ; and when thus suddenly surprised at close quarters,
they emit a harsh croaking cry, rarely heard at other times, which
rings out loudly, even amidst the roar of the rushing waters.
Only once or twice have I tried to cat them. They are generally
very fat, and the fat is abominably fishy and rank ; but if they
are shinned, soaked in two or three waters, and then stewed
with onions and a little Worcester sauce, they will furnish
an abundant meal to a hungry man—a thing worth knowing, as
one occasionally gets them on a blank day in places where
nothing is to be got within fifty miles, and when you cannot
afford to kill one of the baggage sheep. However let no one
try to eat them when anything better is to be got, as only
necessity renders them tolerable.
As VET no one seems to have taken their eggs within our limits,
though they breed in numbers, in our larger rivers, at elevations
of 10,000 feet and upwards (and perhaps even lower), and in
some of the elevated lakes, as the young, from nestlings to nearly
fully-fledged birds, have been occasionally shot and caught, in
such places between the middle of June and the end of July.
I do not know for certain how long they incubate, but I
should guess that with us they lay from about the last week in
April to the middle of May, but some may lay earlier and later
according to elevation.
"The nest, according to Mr. Selby," to quote Yarrell, "is
constructed near to the edge of the water, of a mass of grass,
roots, and other materials, mixed and lined with down. It is
placed sometimes among stones, sometimes in long grass, or
under the cover of bushes, and when the locality affords them
in the stumps or hollows of decayed trees."
Acerbi, also quoted by Yarrell, says :—•
" The Mergus merganser, instead of building a small nest
like the ducks, on the banks, or among the reeds and rushes,
chooses to lay her eggs in the trunk of an old tree, in which
time, or the hand of man, has made such an excavation as she
can conveniently enter. The person that waylays the bird for
her eggs places against a fir or pine tree, somewhere near the
bank of the river, a decayed trunk, with a hole in its middle;
the bird enters and lays her eggs in it ; presently the peasant
comes, and takes away the eggs, leaving, however, one or two.
The bird returns, and, finding but a single egg, lays two or
three more. She is again robbed as before, but a few are left
at last for the increase of her family. As soon as the eggs are
hatched, the mother takes the chicks gently in her bill, carries
and lays them down at the foot of the tree, when she teaches
them the way to the river, in which they instantly swim with
an astonishing facility."
And Dresser tells us that u it breeds late in April or early
in May, and makes its nest in the vicinity of water, cither on
the ground, or else it uses the hollow of a tree, the latter being,
so far as I know, the usual place selected by this species for the
purposes of nidification ; and it frequently deposits its eggs in
the nest-boxes hung up by the peasantry in the north of Scandinavia
and Russia. When at Uleaborg, however, I obtained
eggs from nests on the ground, in a hollow scratched out and
filled with down. When it nests in a tree it frequently makes
use of a suitable hollow at some altitude from the ground, and
fills it with a considerable quantity of down, on which the eggs
arc deposited ; when the young are hatched they are carefully
carried by the female bird in her bill down to the water ; and these
young birds are able at once to swim, and even dive, with ease."
Dybowski, writing of this species in Southern Siberia, says :—
" It nests on the ground, amongst the grass, building with dry
grass and lining the interior thoroughly with down. The female
lays nine eggs and sits close. They arrive about the middle
of April, and remain until Lake Baikal freezes towards the
end of December."
In the treeless and grassless localities in which we mostly
see them in summer, I should not be surprised if they bred like
the Brahminy in holes in rocks, but holes near to and not very
high above the water.
The eggs are said to vary in number from seven to twelve
They are broad, regular ovals, with very fine, smooth, satiny
shells of a uniform buffy white or creamy yellow. They vary
from 2'5 to 29 in length, and from r66 to 1*9 in breadth, but
the average of eleven is 27 by 18 nearly.