51 ICHA.P. X, 



PABv. 30.; 



surface o-rowing water-plants. Tiiey also eat siicii animal 

 matter in the shape of water-insects, worms, snails and 

 shell-fish, etc., which focce themselves on their notice. 



Shoveller. — They feed, says Siwirl-Baker, with bills 

 and heads under water, running the former through the 

 shallows in the mud and so collecting the numerous small 

 forms of animal life \vhich there abound and which, when 

 tiie bill is lifted, are retained while the water filters out. 

 They will eat almost anything, but at the same time 

 animal food undoubtedly forms the major portion of their 

 diet. Doubtless, ivrites Hume, in the more savoury 

 localities such as the more aristocratic ducks frequent, 

 insects and their larva;, worms, small frogs, shells, tiny 

 fish and all kinds of reeds and shoots of water-grasses, 

 rushes and the like constitute their food ; but, where they 

 take up their abode on one of the village ponds, and the 

 pond is a real dirty one, I can assert, from the examina- 

 tion of many recent killed birds, that it is impossible to 

 say what these birds will not eat. All ducks are more or 

 less omnivorous, but no other duck will, as a rule, frequent 

 the dirty holes in which a pair of Shovellers will often 

 pass the winter. 



Shoveller. — Blanford remarks that it never appears to 

 feed, like other ducks, with its head and breast immersed 

 and its tail sticking up vertically. Newton notes its 

 peculiarity of " swimming round in circles with its bill 

 in the water above the spot where Pochards are diving 

 and feeding beneath and sifting out the substances that 

 float up when disturbed by the operations of the diving 

 ducks. " Shovellers, snys Gates, are poor divers. Their foot 

 is smaller in proportion to their body than that of any of 

 the true Ducks. The larger the feet in the Duck tribe, 

 the better they can dive. 



Marblei Duck. — Their food, says Hume of Sind, is 



very varied here the major portion consists of leaves, 



shoots, rootlets, corns and seeds of aquatic plants, inter- 

 mingled with worms, fresh water shells, insects of all 

 kinds and their larvjo. I believe I found a small frog in 

 the stomach of one. 



Red-creste^l. Pochard. — The fact is, says Hume that, 

 though you rxai-at times see it dibbling about in the water 



likeTealand Shovellers its normal habit and practice 



IS to dive and I have watched flocks of them scores of times 

 diving for an hour at a time with pertinacity and energy 

 unsurpassed iiy any other wild fowl. Examine closely 

 their favourite haunts, and you will find them to be almost 

 invariably in just those waters in which they must dive for 

 their food. 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 (the 



