MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 499 



At the end of October 1907, I was again out duck shooting in the same 

 locality, and obtained fifteen grey duck. Of these, no less than four had the 

 orange patches oi P.pacilorliyncha, but in every case the orange mark had a 

 black centre, the amount of black varying in the different specimens. I very 

 much regret that I did not measure the length of the bill, but I had forgotten 

 at the time that the small bill was one of the characters by which the new 

 species is distinguished from the old. 



Now a species of grey duck, presumably P. haringtoni, breeds in the Upper 

 Chindwin : I have personally seen pairs of these duck in June, July, and 

 September, and have heard of broods of young ones and of nests having been 

 found, though personally I have not been fortunate enough to see the young 

 birds or secure the eggs ; and I have shot a duck, presumably P. pacilorhyncha, 

 in February in the same locality : it would appear to me, therefore, that 

 P.pascilofhyncha and P. haringtoni occasionally pair, and produce a hybrid 

 with the spots at the 'base of the mandible partly black and partly orange, 

 or else that P. haringtoni is merely a geographical race or sub-species of 

 P. pacilorhyncha, and occasionally reverts to the typical species. 



It is, perhaps, presumptuous of me to question a species created by so 

 eminent an authority as Mr. Oates, more especially as I foolishly omitted to 

 take measurements of the bill ; but against the five specimens examined by 

 Mr. Oates, I have now obtained four with mixed black and orange patches. 



I shall now endeavour to obtain some more specimens from the Upper 

 Chindwin with either pure orange or variegated patches, and if I am success- 

 ful in so doing they will be preserved and forwarded to the Bombay Natural 

 History Society. 



Since writing the above, I have shot a male wigeon at Kindat, the only one 

 I have ever seen or heard of from the district. 



J. C. HOPWOOD. 



Kindat, Upper Chindwin, 9th November 1907. 



No. XIV.— NESTING OF THE RUFOUS-BELLIED HAWK-EAGLE. 



I read with much interest Mr. Kinloch's letter on the nesting of the Rufous- 

 bellied Hawk-Eagle (Lophotriorchis Jcienerf) in the Journal published on the 

 29th June last. 



Last year an egg was sent to me by one of my people which had been 

 taken on the 16th February 1906 which I could not identify. The description 

 of the bird was simply that it was an eagle, that the nest wis in a tall tree, and 

 that it contained only one egg, which was very much incubated. I sent it to 

 Mr. Stuart Baker with a list of all the Eagles that have been found in 

 Travancore, and he replied that he had no eggs exactly similar to it and that 

 it was probably the egg of Lophotriorchis kieneri. 

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