GARGANEY. 33 



the distinctive male breeding note that has earned it the 

 name of "Cricket-Teal"; Merrett calls it "a kind of teale 

 which some fowlers call crackling teale from the noyse it 

 maketh." This is a rattling or clicking note, Hkened by 

 Saunders to the whirr of a child's rattle, but to my ears it more 

 closely resembles the popular imitation of a pig's grunt, or 

 a feeble, vibrating version of the note of the male Mute Swan. 

 Captain A. W. Boyd, however, who listened to the same birds 

 that I heard, inclines to the rattle simile. 



When making their toilet the drakes of a little party paid 

 special attention to their sickle-shaped scapulars, but they did 

 not indulge in any elaborate postures to exhibit these to the 

 ducks. They occasionally swam round the ducks, rattling and 

 grunting, and now and then sparring, but were little excited. 

 Immature drakes are slow in attaining full dress, and old ones 

 remain late in the eclipse plumage. In England the nest 

 (Plate 22) is usually in a marsh, a depression amongst thick 

 herbage thinly bordered with grass ; the down, added as incu- 

 bation proceeds, is blackish tipped with light buff. The creamy 

 eggs (Plate 21), six to thirteen in number, are laid in the latter 

 half of April or in May. The duck attends to domestic duties. 



The crown of the drake is dark brown, emphasising the 

 tapering white superciliary streak ; the lower part of the face is 

 chestnut flecked with white. The brown neck and breast are 

 beautifully pencilled with black, and this breast, variously 

 described as light, dark, or yellowish brown, sandy buff or pale 

 chestnut, struck ^Ir. T. Hadfield and me as being distinctly 

 vinaceous ; Montagu speaks of the neck as " purplish." Below 

 the sharp line of demarcation the abdomen is white, and the 

 greyish flanks are finely vermiculated. The wing is described 

 above. The bill is black, the legs leaden tinged with brown or 

 green, the irides brown. The duck is brown and buff ; her 

 markings are bolder than in the drake. The eye-stripe is buff, 

 and the chin and under parts are white faintly suffused with 



Scries II. D 



