20 INDIAN SPORTING BIRDS 



Marbled Teal. 



* Marmaronetta angustirostris. 



The Marbled Teal is decidedly large for a teal, weighing 

 about a pound. Its peculiar colouring, which is the same in 

 both sexes, is very distinctive, though also very unpretentious. 

 It is a mottling of drab and cream-colour, the only approach to 

 distinct and easily apprehensible colour-points being an ill- 

 defined dark eye-patch and pale grey edgings to the wings. It 

 has a very faded and washed-out appearance, but its dark slaty 

 bill and feet contrast strikingly with the pallid plumage. 



The pale or cinnamon variety of the garganey which some- 

 times occurs has been mistaken for this bird, and so has the 

 female mandarin duck ; but neither has the dark eye-patch, 

 and the mandarin is not mottled on the back, while the garganey 

 is far smaller than the present species, and when albinistic, 

 generally has the beak and feet flesh-coloured. 



The marbled teal, as a rule, is only found in winter, and 

 chiefly in the North-West Provinces, extending as far as Oudh ; 

 it has even strayed to the neighbourhood of Calcutta, but it is 

 only really common in Sind, where it may fairly be called 

 abundant. It is among the surface-feeders what the white-eyed 

 pochard is among the divers, a bird of coot-like proclivities, 

 preferring water with plenty of rushes growing in it, and getting 

 up, not in flocks but independently like quail ; when on the 

 wing also, they fly low and not very fast. They will dive and 

 hide under water with the bill out when wounded, and seem 

 seldom to come ashore, though they walk w^ell, as might be 

 expected from their light build, which they share with the 

 Andaman and clucking teals, both good pedestrians. When 

 courting the drake jerks back his head on to his shoulders ; his 

 note is the usual whistle of teal drakes, while the duck quacks. 

 It feeds pretty equally on both vegetable and animal food, and 

 again like the white-eye, is not a good table bird. 



Some eggs found in a nest under a babul bush in a salt marsh 



* Querquedula on plate. 



