4 Allen's naturalists library. 



Caspian Seas, and the Indian Peninsula, being very abundant 

 in the last-named locality. 



Habits. — The l\ed-crested Pochard is a fresh-water Duck, and 

 frequents open sheets of water and broads, where there are 

 fringes of reeds or overhanging trees, and being a capital 

 diver, it loves places where the water is deep. Its favourite 

 haunts, says Mr. A. O. Hume, who has given an excellent 

 account of this species in his "Game Birds of India," are deep 

 broads, " where the feathery water-weed beds do not reach 

 within several feet of the surface, not the comparatively shallow 

 ones, where the same weeds lie in thick masses coiled along 

 the surface." Mr. Hume observes that habitually these Ducks 

 keep in moderately-sized flocks of from ten to fifteen, but 

 occasionally on very large pieces of water they are seen in 

 thousands. Of their food he writes : — " Although mainly vege- 

 tarians, they indulge more in animal food than the Pochard. I 

 have found small frogs, fish-spawn, shells (both land and 

 w^ater), insects, grubs, worms, and, on three or four occasions, 

 tiny fish, mixed with the vegetable matter, sand, and pebbles 

 that their stomachs contained. . . . I examined one male 

 which had entirely gorged itself on fishes about an inch in 

 length. 



"Though constantly seen feeding by day, when in suitable 

 situations, they also feed a good deal during the night, and 

 those individuals, whose day-quarters happen for the time to 

 be on waters that yield little food, leave these at dusk for more 

 prolific haunts. They are strong but heavy fliers, and are slow 

 in getting under way. ... I have sometimes found them 

 out of the water, on the land a yard or two from the water's 

 edge, grazing and picking up small shells and insects, and they 

 then walk better than the other Pochards. . . . Their 

 call-note, not very often heard by day unless they are alarmed, 

 is quite of the Pochard character, not the quack of a duck, but 

 a deep grating ' kurr.' Occasionally the males only, I think, 

 emit a sharp sibilant note — a sort of whistle, quite different from 

 that of the Wigeon, and yet somewhat reminding one of that. 

 . . . They have a very characteristic wing-rustle, which, 

 though resembling that of the Pochard, is louder and harsher; 

 their wings are short, and rapidly agitated, make a very distinct, 

 palpitating, rushing sound, by which even a single bird, pass- 



