23 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XII. 



set in, though a few males may stiU be fomul in the female garb as late 

 as the middle of November. 



Outside India the range of this fine duck may roughly be said to be 

 the Northern Hemisphere. It breeds practically right across its habitat 

 in the sub-Arctic region, and in the winter ranges down to Northern and 

 Central Africa, and perhaps even further south, almost the whole of 

 Southern Asia, and again as far south as Mexico and Jamaica in America. 



Within India it is easier to say where it is not found rather than to 

 enumerate all those places in which it does occur. Eoughly speaking, 

 it is found in vast ninnbers fro in the Himalayas, throughout Sind, 

 North Bombay, the North-West Provinces, Punjalj, and Bengal ; from 

 here it gets less common as it wanders south, until in Southern India, 

 south of Mysore, and in Madras it is not found at all. 



Throughout Assam, Manipur, Tipperah, and into Burma it abounds; 

 and it is plentiful also in the Sunderbunds. Of course in some places 

 it is more exceedingly abundant than in others. Thus in 1882-83 in 

 Bengal we found that the Gadwalls numbered at least two to every one 

 of ail other kinds of ducks lumped together. Of a magnificent bag 

 made by three guns in the Moolna bheel (Sunderljunds), out of 140 

 couple of duck and teal I think at least 4U couple, if not more, must 

 have been Gadwall, and of the rest probably 70 or 80 couple were teal 

 of sorts. W oods speaks of patches of water in Manipur " looking black 

 with the number of Gadwall assembled on them." They begin to arrive 

 there, according to him, about the 1 5th October, and though in 

 Kashmir and along the Himalayas a few birds may arrive earlier, 

 this will be found to be about the earliest date for Northern 

 India. 



In Mysore they do not arrive until the end of November as a rule, 

 and at intervening places will be obtained on intervening dates. In 

 Lower Bengal we never expected to pee many Ijefore December ; and 

 I think they were most common in late December and early January. 

 Hume says re the birds again leaving : "In the south they leave by the 

 end of March or early in April. Farther north they are somewhat 

 later (it depends a good deal on the season); and both in Sind and the 

 Western and North- Western Punjab they are frequently shot in the 

 first week of May." The dates are, I think, too late for Bengal and 

 Assam, where there are few birds left after the first vseek or so in March, 



