GARGANEY 17 



a pound. It has a rather shorter beak, and is generally more 

 shapely and fashioned like a miniature mallard. 



No duck visits us in greater numbers than this ; in fact, i 

 what one saw in the Calcutta Bazaar in the nineties was any 

 criterion, this bird is in winter the most numerous duck in the 

 country, surpassing even the whistler and the common teal. It 

 habitually associates in flocks of hundreds and even thousands ; 

 parties of less than a score are uncommon. The large flocks 

 are mostly to be found in the north-west, though the bird is 

 distributed over India and Burma generally, and is well known 

 in Ceylon. It has less predilection for small and weed-grown 

 bits of water than the common teal, and is quite at home on 

 wide lakes and rivers, where by choice it spends the day. It 

 feeds mostly at night, and in some localities destroys the paddy 

 by the acre, being chiefly a vegetable feeder, though of course, 

 like ducks in general, it does not despise any animal food it 

 comes across. In " tealeries " also, it is found to thrive on the 

 same vegetable regime as the common teal ; it is never, however, 

 quite so good a bird on the table. 



In disposition and style of flight it is decidedly different ; it 

 is, as a general rule, nmch wilder, and flies much straighter and 

 to a greater distance when alarmed ; the flocks pack very close, 

 and as they pass overhead the sound made by their wings — a 

 pattering swish, Mr. E. C. S. Baker calls it — is very character- 

 istic. They swim and walk as well as common teal, and dive 

 much better ; Hume sums the matter up by saying they are 

 more vigorous and less agile birds. Garganey are not at all 

 noisy birds ; the duck quacks, but the note of the drake is as 

 different from that of the common teal as it can well be ; it is a 

 sort of gurgling rattle, most unmistakable when once heard. It 

 is constantly uttered during courtship, when the bird does not 

 rear up like the common teal, but merely moves his head up and 

 down like the shoveller; in fact, to this bird all the teal with 

 blue or bluish patches on the wings seem to be related. 

 Judging from the note, it is no doubt this bird, not the common 

 teal, that was the original Querquedula of the ancients — the 

 Spanish name Gerceta comes very near this Latin one. Although 

 not nearly so common in Europe as in the East, the garganey 

 2 



