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severely at breeding-time, like so many other Dncks. They

build in holes at a moderate height from the ground.


Owing to the difficulty of procuring sound and steady

birds for shipment, and the care they require on the voyage, this

species is not likely to be readily obtainable for some time to

come. Still, a few have reached England since I sent the first

specimens above-mentioned, and, as everyone here admires the

pretty quaint little birds, they only need to be better known to

be thoroughly appreciated by amateurs of waterfowl, especially

by those who have no room for big Ducks.


The Pink-headed Duck ( Rhodo?iessa caryopliyllacea).


This most extraordinary-looking bird differs from the

Cotton-Teai in being very hard to get and very easy to manage

when you have got it. Only a few birds annually come on sale

in Calcutta, and these are expensive as wildfowl go here, but

their habits are not such as to give rise to any difficulty in

managing them, being very similar to those of the Mallard.

The “ Pink-header,” as he is often irreverently called out here in

India, is also much like that bird in size and shape, but is rather

smaller and decidedly slimmer in build, the head and neck being

almost gaunt in appearance. The wings are also shorter, for

this Duck does not migrate, and, indeed, is not found outside

India.


Its colour is most remarkable ; the body is brownish black,

with a fawn coloured wing-bar and the quills also shaded with

that hue, while the head is pink—a bright rose-pink in the

drake, and a dull smutty pink in the duck. Both have black

feet, but they differ much in the colour of their bills, the drake’s

being fleshy white, and the duck’s black. Young birds are light

in colour below, and have heads of a sort of drab hue. The

drake does not go out of colour to any great extent, only getting

a black streak on the crown, which the duck always has.


This bird is allied, by the structure of the male’s wind¬

pipe, and by the peculiar wing-pattern, to the Pochards, but it is

a true surface-feeder in all its habits, although I saw one recently

dive just as neatly as a Pochard, and stay under as long. But as

some other Ducks were playing at the time, I think he was only

in fun. Certainly one I kept for a long time on the Museum

pond never attempted to dive for food as my diving Ducks do.

The drake has a most peculiar two-syllabled call, which he often

utters—something like “wugh-ali,” with a metallic ring to it.

The species has never, I believe, been bred in Europe, though it



