INDIAN DVGKS AND THEIR ALLIES. 449 



This was thirt3--five years ago and I fear that flocks like this one are 

 things of the past though they may now and then be met with in very 

 vast flocks. All through the Simderbunds and again on the Chilka lake 

 they are often to be seen in flocks of thousands, and in Oudh, the 

 North- West and Scinde such flocks are by no means rare. 



As a rule over most of its North and North-Western range the flock 

 may roughly be said to average somewhere about and between one to 

 two hundred. To the East, I think, they average smaller and would 

 put it somewhere between fifty and a hundred. Small flocks of five or 

 six or even ten or twelve are not, I think, at all commonlj' met with 

 while pairs and single individuals are hardly ever seen. 



The Gargauey haunts almost any kind of water, not as a rule fre- 

 quenting small quick running streams or small clean tanks and ponds 

 and being specially partial to wide stretches of fen or bheel, well 

 covered over their greater extent with weeds, yet having fairly extensive 

 patches of clear water dotted here and there over their surface. 



During the day they keep almost entirely to the larger sheets of 

 water or, sometimes, to the large rivers, such as Indus, Ganges, etc., 

 where they float in the centre in dense closely packed masses. This 

 manner of packing is very characteristic of the Garganey and they 

 keep more closely together than does almost any other kind of duck* 

 even when flying they do not straggle much. 



They feed in the smaller tanks and jhils and also in the paddy fields 

 and on various young land crops. Hume says that in some parts of 

 India they visit the paddy fields in such numbers that on one visit 

 acres of paddy are destroyed. Their staple diet is vegetarian and of 

 vegetable matter, the staple articles are rice, both cultivated and wild 

 and the young leaves and shoots of various water plants. They also 

 eat various kinds of reeds, roots, etc., and such animal matter in the 

 shape of worms, snails and shellfish, etc., which force themselves oq 

 their notice. 



Hume describes well the sound of their flight thus : '^ Whether it is 

 only because one habitually meets them in such large flocks or whether 

 it is really peculiar to them, I do not know, but certainly one associates 

 the overhead flight of this species with a surging hiss, more even 

 sustained and rushing than that of any of our other ducks. Any one 

 who has stood under heavy round shot fire knows the way in which 



