INDIAN DUCKS AND THEIR ALLIES. 457 



As regards its haunts, these ure everywhere and anywhere, but it 

 does not care for open, deep water and it prefers small creeks, ponds, 

 jheels and tanks which are well covered with vegetation, and also 

 stretches of shallow water with plentiful cover and a muddy bottom. 



Hume says : " To the shores they stick, into the open water they 

 never seem to straggle by choice, and if you watch them they are for 

 the most part either dozing on the brink or paddling slowly in the 

 shallows, with their entire bills and moro or less of their heads under 

 water, their heads working from side to side all the while like a 

 Flamingo's or Spoonbill's." 



I have, however, seen the Shoveller in open water, but this only 

 rarely and only during the heat of the day, when the birds wish to sleep. 



As noted above by Hume they feed with bills and heads under water, 

 running the former through the shallows in the mud and so collecting 

 the numerous small forms of animal life which there abo;*nd and which, 

 when the bill is lifted, are retained whilst the water filters out. They 

 are omnivorous and will eat almost anything, but at the same time 

 animal food undoubtedly forms the major portion of their diet. 



Except for the very handsome appearance of the full plumaged 

 drake, the Shoveller is worth little from any point of view. As an 

 edible they are one of the worst of the duck tribe ; coarse, oily and 

 fishy in taste and ranking equal to the white-eye and inferior to the 

 whistling teal. 



As regards their feeding and its quality Hume writes : " Doubtless, 

 in more savoury localities, such as the more aristocratic ducks frequent, 

 insects and their larvse, worms, small frogs, shells, tiny fish and all 

 kinds of reeds and shoots of water grasses, rushes and the like, con- 

 stitute their food ; but where they take up their abode on one of the 

 village ponds, and the pond is a real dirty one, I can assert, from the 

 examination of many recently killed birds, that it is impossible to 

 say what these birds will not eat. 



" All ducks are more or less omnivorous, but no other duck will 

 as a rule, frequent the dirty holes in which a pair of Shovellers often 

 pass the entire winter." 



A curious note on its food, etc., is that in Lathom's " Synopsis of 

 Birds," in which he states : " Its chief food is insects for which it is 

 continually muddling in the water with its bill. It is also said to dex- 



