ei8 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XII. 



It is, on the whole, a very silent bird. Hume says that '' their 

 quack or note is peculiar, though something like that of the pochard, 

 a harsh ' koor, kirr, kirr,' with which one soon becomes acquainted as 

 they invariably utter it ' stuccato' as they bustle up from the rushes, 

 often within a few yards of the boat." 



It is in reference to this bird and Captain Baldwin's note on the 

 frequency he has shot it without any feet, not without one only but 

 without either, that Hume raises the point as to how their feet have 

 been lost, &c., and says that he himself has killed more than fifty birds 

 thus maimed. Frost bite he dismisses from the list of probable causes, 

 and in this most of us will join him ; but what then is the cause ? 

 Crocodiles would not, as a rule, take a foot at a time ; traps are shown 

 to be very unlikely agents, and one is thrown back on the fish theory. 

 This is an extremely likely one, for I have myself known domestic 

 ducks to lose their limbs from the attacks of a huge pike ; indeed, when 

 the birds were young and weak, they often lost not their feet only, 

 but their lives also. Ducklings constantly disappeared in this manner. 

 As there are many other fish quite as voracious as the pike in other 

 climates, this would account very reasonably for so many birds losing 

 one or more limbs. 



This is one of the very few migratory ducks which breed regularly 

 within our limits. As to its breeding in the plains Hume writes : — " The 

 White-eye breeds possibly in some localities in the plains of India and 

 in Sind, where it swarms during the cold weather, and where I 

 was informed that in some broads it remains during the whole year. 

 1 have never, however, succeeded in finding a nest, or obtaining any 

 reliable information as to one being found in the plains." 



This was written more than eighteen years ago, and the reliable 

 information is still wanting, so that it is only fair to presume that the 

 duck does not breed in the plains. 



In Kashmir it breeds regularly and in very great numbers, so large, 

 indeed, that the collecting of the eggs and bringing them into Sirinagar 

 by boats for sale, forms a regular and profitable profession with a num- 

 ber of the people living in the vicinity of their favourite breeding 

 haunts. 



The nest is an ordinary structure of fair dimensions, made in the usual 

 duck fashion of reeds, grasses, &c., and is, in India at least, nearly 



