2 INDIAN SPOETING BIEDS 



streaked with brown. Young drakes assume a plumage similar 

 to this for the first feathering, though at first sight all the brood 

 look much alike. The undress plumage is assumed after breed- 

 ing, about June, and lost about September ; it comes on at the 

 time when all the great wing-quills are moulted, so that the birds 

 cannot fly for some weeks. This peculiarity of putting on a 

 plumage more or less like that of the female characterizes most 

 ducks in the Northern Hemisphere when the sexes have a very 

 distinct plumage ; it is curious that it is carried in the summer, 

 when most birds are in the highest feather ; but the facts that 

 it is really a winter plumage in the cotton-teal, and almost so 

 in the garganey, and that ducks as a matter of course start 

 courting in the autumn as soon as they get their gay plumage, 

 suggest that it is really a winter plumage that has had a tendency 

 to be shifted earlier and earlier till it is now a summer one. 



Mallard weigh in the wild state in India about two and a half 

 to three pounds in the case of drakes, and even up to four ; 

 females are about two, and may approach three. Domestic 

 ducks in India are not much bigger than this, though they may 

 look so on account of their coarseness and loose feathering ; as 

 they often resemble mallard in colour it is just as well to be 

 careful how one shoots at unusually unsuspicious-looking ducks 

 until one is sure they really are wild. 



Wild mallard in India are not as a rule to be expected away 

 from the North-west, and even there it is only in the extreme 

 end of that region that they are abundant ; and south of Bombay 

 they are unknown. As a straggler the mallard occurs all along 

 our Northern Provinces as far as Mandalay ; in Cachar, Mr. 

 E. C. S. Baker reports it as "not very rare." One wants to be 

 quite sure, however, of any given bird being really a mallard 

 when it is shot out of the North-west Province ; of course the 

 full-plumaged drake is unmistakable, but there are several ducks 

 very like the female, the yellow-nib even having the blue wing- 

 bar as above noted. As mallard breed in Kashmir they often 

 have not very far to come to get to their winter quarters in some 

 cases, though many winter in Kashmir itself ; in Sind they are 

 very common, and it is only here that hundreds may be seen in 

 a flock ; elsewhere the parties are small, and odd specimens. 



