14 INDIAN SPORTING BIRDS 



ground and lays nine eggs or so of a yellowish-grey colour. The 

 young are very small, hardly bigger than young teal, and their 

 beaks are not broadened at first, though rather long, but they 

 start surface-bibbling and revolving round and round at once. 



The shoveller is well off for names; in Nepal even the sexes 

 are distinguished, the male as Dhobaha, and the female as KJiikeria, 

 Sankhar ; in Sind the name is Allpat and in Bengal Pantamuhki, 

 while, in addition to that given at the head of this article, there 

 are other Hindustani titles — Piinana, Tokarwalah, and Ghirali. 



Common or Grccn-wingcd Teal. 



* Nettium crecca. Lohya Kerra, Hindustani. 



The common teal, the smallest, and one of the handsomest 

 and most sporting of our migratory ducks, can be at once distin- 

 guished from all the rest by the brilliant patch of metallic emerald 

 green on the wing, whence the name green-winged teal often 

 applied to it to distinguish it from the blue-winged teal or 

 garganey. Except for this wing-mark, there is nothing dis- 

 tinctive about the mottled-brown plumage of the female, but the 

 drake is a most handsomely coloured little bird, with his chestnut 

 head widely banded with green, the cream and black stripes 

 on his pencilled-grey back, and the thrush-like spotting on the 

 breast. This teal, though with a proportionately long narrow 

 bill, is a thick-set, plump little bird, weighing from 7' 7 to 12 

 •ounces, with no noticeable distinction in this respect between 

 the sexes. 



In the drake's summer undress, which he loses later than 

 is usually the case, so that specimens bearing more or less of 

 it are usually seen even in their winter quarters here for a month 

 or two, he is generally like the female, but has the breast plain 

 brown without speckling, and the markings of the body less well 

 defined. The drake's note is a whistle, the duck's is a tiny quack ; 

 he shows off to her like the mallard, but with a quick, jerky action. 



Common teal are just as familiar in the East during the cold 



* Querqioedula on plate. 



