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Amid this ever-shifting panorama, giving it life and beauty, covering pool and channel with merry, restless knots of diving, feeding, coquetting, quarreling swimmers, relieving the colorless ice with groups of jetty velvet and scoter ducks, gray and white-winged coots, crested mergansers in their gorgeous spring plumage, and fat, lazy black ducks, with Lilliputian blue and green winged teal, filling the air with the whirr of swift pinions, and the ceaseless murmur of the mating myriads, rested from their long northward journey, a host such as mortal eye hath seldom beheld, and which it hath fallen to the lot of few sportsmen to witness and enjoy.
The Velvet Scoter is also included in Professor Ansted's list, and marked as occurring in Guernsey; but there seems to be no other evidence of its having occurred in the Islands; and a mistake may easily have been made, however, as the Velvet Scoter occurs tolerably frequently on the south coast of Devon, though never in such numbers as the Common Scoter; it may, of course, occur in the Channel Islands occasionally.
I had a presentiment that they would find none, so kept the camera and went off to the Lake a mile west, and there made drawings of some tracks, took photos, etc., and on the lake saw about twenty-five pairs of ducks, identified Whitewinged Scoter, Pintail, Green-winged Teal, and Loon. I also watched the manoeuvres of a courting Peetweet.
The King Eider is also included in the list, but no letter marking the distribution through the Islands is given, and no information beyond the mere name, so I should think in all probability this must have been a mistake, especially as I can find no other evidence whatever of its occurrence. There is no specimen of either bird in the Museum. COMMON SCOTER. Oidemia nigra, Linnaeus.
French, "Macreuse," "Canard macreuse." The Scoter is a common autumn and winter visitant to all the Islands, generally making its appearance in considerable flocks; sometimes, however, the flocks get broken up, and single birds may then be seen scattered about in the more sheltered bays. Some apparently remain till tolerably late in the spring as Mr.
And there is the well-known `pintail, and the `pochard' or `red-head; and the `mallard, from which comes the common domestic variety, and the `scoter, and `surf, and `velvet, and `dusky, ducks these last four being all, more or less, of a dark colour. And there are the `shell-drakes, or `fishers, that swim low in the water, dive and fly well, but walk badly, and feed altogether on fish.
MacCulloch, however, told me afterwards, when I asked him more about them, and especially whether he had seen any white about the wing, that he had not seen any white whatever about them, so I have but little doubt that they were Common Scoters, and he could hardly have failed to be struck by the conspicuous white bar on the wing, by which the Velvet Scoter, both male and female, may immediately be distinguished from the Common Scoter.
The day died, and the moon came out to wink and dodge and play a foolish game of hide-and-seek in and out among the clouds. She showed the skua, a black knob atop of the black blob of his bowlder, apparently fast asleep, invisible if we did not know he was there. She showed black dots bobbing upon silver lanes, which were sea-duck of various kinds scaup, long tail, scoter, and the rest.
The Common Scoter is included in Professor Ansted's list, and marked only as occurring in Guernsey.
To this list my ornithological comrade before mentioned added seven species, namely: white-winged scoter, barred owl, cowbird, purple finch, white-winged crossbill, fox sparrow, and winter wren. Between us, as far as land birds went, we did pretty well.