30 INDIAN SPOKTING BIRDS 



vegetable matter chiefly, there being but a small amount of down 

 lining supplied by the bird in many cases. It is sometimes 

 actually in the water, supported on the weeds, and in any case 

 very near the edge. 



Outside India the white-eye breeds through Western Asia to 

 the Mediterranean region ; it is really a southern species, rarely 

 going north of Central Europe ; in Britain, it is the rare 

 "ferruginous duck" of the bird-books. India seems its chief 

 wmter resort, as in the case of the splendid red-crested pochard. 

 The Bengali name is Lal-higri or Bhuti-hans ; Malac is used in 

 Nepal Province and Burtiu in Sind. 



Bacr's White-eyed Pochard. 



Nyroca baeri. Boro Lalhigj-a, Cachari. 



That Baer's white-eye is a very uncertain visitor to our 

 Empire, is proved by the fact that Hume and his numerous 

 collectors and correspondents never got to know about it. Yet 

 the adult is a most unmistakable bird, the green-glossed black 

 head contrasting so strikingly with the chocolate breast which 

 it shares with the common white-eyed pochard. In fact, except 

 for the head, the two are much alike, but an important difference 

 is that the white on the belly of the Baer's white-eye runs 

 irregularly up on to the flanks, thus showing above the water- 

 line, and furnishing a means of distinction, even at a distance, 

 from the common white-eye. 



The sexes are more alike in this species than in the 

 ordinary white-eye, but the female is distinguishable by the 

 presence of a rusty area between the eye and the beak, con- 

 trasting with the green of the rest of the head. This, like the 

 plumage generally, is less rich than in the drake, but the 

 difference is very slight, and it is quite a mistake to describe 

 the female's head as simply black. When a bird shows no 

 green gloss it is generally small, and probably indicates a cross 

 with the commoner species, which is very noticeably the smaller 

 of the two. 



So much is this the case, that it is one of the distinctions of 



