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The name is derived from the bird's beautiful buff and rufous color which is somewhat like that of the robes worn by the Brahmin priests. In America the name "sheldrake" is applied erroneously to the fish-eating mergansers, and much confusion has thus arisen, for the two are quite unrelated and belong to perfectly distinct groups.
By this time the stalker had got out of sight. He was making a considerable detour, so as to get round by the back of the hillock unobserved; and when he came into view again, he was on the other side of the valley. The mergansers, if they were mergansers, were still swimming about unsuspectingly, though sometimes at a considerable distance apart. "Does Miss Cunyngham shoot as well as fish?"
The mergansers have narrow, hooked, saw-toothed beaks quite unlike those of the sheldrakes, and their habits are entirely dissimilar. The brahminy ducks, although rather tough, are not bad eating. We usually found them feeding in fields not far from the river or in flooded rice dykes, and very often sitting in pairs on the sand banks near the water.
Their beaks are narrow, hooked, and sharply toothed, which makes it easy for them to hold their slippery prey. But this oily food makes their flesh so rank that none of them is fit food for House People. They are all called Mergansers, and we have in this country four different species.
The greater number of Red-breasted Mergansers killed in the Channel Islands which I have seen have been either females or males that had not assumed the full adult plumage in fact, in that state of plumage in which they are the "Dun Diver" of Bewick; full-plumaged adult males do, however, occur as well as females and young males, or males in a state of change.
The nightingale sings in the thickets; the woodpecker makes the primeval woods resound with his chisel; crows of the pink and black species croak from the dead branches of the oaks; ravens with dark red legs and scarlet bills build their nests in the top of the elms; detachments of blue wood-pigeons cover the fields as numerous and as tame as sparrows; mergansers and golden-eyed ducks haunt in numerous flocks the running waters; and wild geese flying down in the month of December from the Russian wastes, halt on their way to the waters of Persia, and mixed with swans, float in stately fleets on the shores of both the Euxine and the Caspian.
Female: without any such crest as her mate has, and brown where he is black. A Citizen of North America, very handsome and stylish when he is in full dress; but he is a Fishing Duck, and therefore not very good to eat, though not as rank as other Mergansers. Like the Wood Duck, but unlike nearly all other members of the Duck tribe, this Merganser builds his downy nest in a hollow tree or stump.
Actually, there came flock after flock flying in exactly the same direction. They seemed to follow a fixed route. There were ducks and gray geese, surf-scoters and guillemots, loons and pin-tail ducks and mergansers and grebes and oyster-catchers and sea-grouse.
These, on account of their toothed bills, form a genus of themselves the `mergansers, and four distinct species of them are known in America." The approach of night, and the necessity of landing, to make their night camp, brought Lucien's lecture to a close. Indeed Francois was glad when it ended, for he was beginning to think it somewhat tedious.
"Very well, call in the dogs. I'm going to sit down and have a pipe. I suppose you'll do the same, Mr. Moore though I must say this for you that you can walk. You have the advantage of youth, and you haven't as much to carry as I have. Well, I propose we have a few minutes' rest? and we will occupy ourselves in watching Waveney stalk those mergansers. There's a job for you, Waveney.
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