The present species exceeds the goosander in elegance of form and in handsomeness of colouring and ornament. It is a winter visitor, and also a resident throughout the year on the coast of Scotland north of the Clyde, and of the Orkneys, Shetlands, Hebrides, and St. Kilda. In Scotland and Ireland it inhabits inland lakes and rivers, as well as the sea-coasts. During the cold season it is gregarious, and usually goes in small flocks. In March these companies break up, and male and female are thereafter seen always in close companionship. They are excessively shy and wary birds, diving or taking to flight on the least alarm. They feed on small fishes and marine molluscs, which they take by diving; near the shore, where the water is shallow, they are often seen with head and neck almost continuously immersed as they explore among the seaweed at the bottom for food. They swim like the cormorant, having the faculty of sinking the body beneath the surface; and also dive like that bird, springing up and plunging down almost vertically. The favourite nesting-place is on an island, under the shelter of a rock, sometimes in a hole in the ground. The nest is formed of leaves and grass placed in a slight hollow, down being added later by the incubating bird. Six to nine eggs are laid, sometimes as many as twelve. The eggs are glossy, and pale olive-grey in colour. The drake does not assist in incubation or in protecting the young. Smew. Mergus albellus. Forehead, crown, with crest, throat, neck, and under parts satin-white; a black patch before and below the eye, and a greenish black triangular patch on the crest; back black, with a crescentic mottled band of the same colour stretching over each side of the shoulders, and another in front of each wing; scapulars white margined with black; lesser wing-coverts white; greater coverts black, with two narrow white bars; wing- and tail-feathers blackish brown; flanks vermiculated with grey; bill, legs, and feet lead-colour. Length, seventeen inches. _Female_: head reddish brown; collar ash-grey; rest of the plumage much as in the male. In June the male assumes the female plumage, which is retained until the autumn. * * * * * The smew, or nun, as it is sometimes called, is usually placed among the irregular visitors to the British Islands, and hardly comes within the scope of this book; but there is reason to believe that it is present every winter, although sometimes in very small numbers, in the seas around our coasts; and it has, therefore, some claim to be described as a British species. Females and immature birds, called red-headed smews by fishermen, are frequently met with on the east coasts of England and Scotland; males in the beautiful mature plumage are very rare, it is supposed because they do not approach the shore, except in very severe weather.