Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 4 (1900).djvu/542

508 We find, then, that the Tufted Ducks at— Ellesmere are winter visitors only. Sandford„summer„„ Weston„residents. Wishing to observe these Ducks in their breeding haunts, I this year paid two visits to Sandford Pool, by kind invitation of Mrs. Sandford. The first visit was on May 10th, when all eight birds—four drakes and four ducks—were swimming about on the open water; apparently not yet nesting, [Subsequent events showed that the Ducks had already laid eggs, and they began to sit within the following week.]

On the pool was a Swan's nest, containing seven cygnets, and two eggs just hatching—an unusually large clutch—all afterwards reared successfully. I obtained several excellent photographs of these cygnets in the nest. On the approach of the punt, the mother Swan, who was sitting, got up and slipped into the water, where, joining her mate, the pair swam round in circles, only betraying wrath at the intrusion by an occasional hiss. This rather belies the reputed ferocity of the Swan in the breeding season.

Three weeks later the keeper at Sandford reported that he had found a Tufted Duck's nest with eggs, so on June 1st I paid a second visit to the pool. This time there were no drakes to be seen, but there was one duck swimming about. The eggs in the nest found by the keeper had hatched out the day before my visit, and both ducks and ducklings had disappeared. However, after a long search, the keeper found another nest with eight eggs in it. Of this I obtained a good photograph. Soon afterwards I found another nest with eggs, and an empty nest which appeared to have been vacated for some days. Close to this last was an egg which had evidently rolled out of the nest, for, when blown, it proved not to have been incubated. Thus all four nests belonging to the four pairs of ducks were accounted for—two with eggs in, and two hatched out.

The nests are hard to find, for they are placed on marshy ground beneath, and entirely concealed by, dead reeds and rushes. They are made of rushes in the form of a mound, with a deep cup in the centre. The cup is lined with down, intermixed with fragments of dead rushes. The down is very dark brown, with a dirty white fleck in the centre of each bit. It is