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



in practically every month in the year and such records are many, but 

 as I have said elsewhere, every year millions are killed, and it would be 

 strange indeed if a few did not get injuries from which they recovered 

 yet not sufficiently soon to allow of their migrating. 



Colonel Tickell writing from Moulmein mentions a young bird just 

 fledged, which had been caught on a small pond in the vicinity. This 

 may have been a young bird, backward and rather weak and conse- 

 quently so exhausled with its long journey as to be caught and pro- 

 duced as a specimen locally bred, or it may have been one bred under 

 the circumstances already suggested. 



Blyth wrote in reference to this statement of Tickell's : " The Gar- 

 ganey breeds sparingly no doubt in India, as well as in Bunnah and 

 Tenuasserim," but from what this deduction was made I cannot tell nor 

 can I find any perfectly authentic record of the Garganey bi'eeding in 

 India beyond the circumstantial evidence given by Colonel Irby's 

 young birds. 



They breed throughout the North Temperate Zone in Europe 

 and Asia. In the former continent they breed as far South as 

 France, north Italy, Greece and throughout the Balkan States and 

 Russia into Asia. In parts of Asia Minor, South Siberia, Manchuria, 

 Amoor and Northern China, but not in Japan as far as is yet known. 



They desert the larger open pieces of water during the breeding 

 season and resort to smaller pools and ponds, fens and bogs, rarely 

 the mossy and weed-covered borders of streams and yet more rarely 

 the reed-fringed shores of lakes, etc. 



Although so commonly found on the sea coast and on salt water 

 creeks and tidal waters yet the Garganey seems always to breed inland 

 and I can find no record of their nest or eggs being taken in such 

 places. 



The nest is the usual mass of reeds, weeds and soft vegetation 

 made by most ducks and it is said that occasionally the}' are made of 

 sticks and twigs, but this I imagine is very exceptional. 



The lining of down and feathers varies much, in some it is very 

 dense and copious, in others very scanty; normally it is neither the one 

 nor the other, rather scanty however than otherwise. 



It is most often placed in some thick tuft of coarse grass, bed of 

 reeds or tangle of shrubs and grass in fenland or on the borders of 



