ASARCORNIS SCUTULATA 45 



the Mikirs assured me that the birds sometimes made their nests in 

 holes in trees, sometimes made a rough nest on masses of branches, 

 and at other times made a grass and feather-lined nest in scrub- 

 jungle or grass at the edge of pieces of water lying in jungle. 



The live birds were all obtained by setting innumerable nooses 

 about the edges of the waters frequented by them, and I was told 

 that they were easy to set, as these ducks habitually resort to the 

 same few feet of ground when entering or leaving the water. 



General Habits. — In 1900 I was stationed at Dibrugarh, the head- 

 quarters of the Lakhimpur district, and soon became well acquainted 

 with this duck. Indeed I had only been a few days in the station 

 when a pair flew over the tennis-courts while we were playing 

 tennis, and during the five years I was in the district I must have 

 kept some thirty or forty of them in a tealery and seen others 

 kept by planters and other people in the district. 



A Mr. W. T. Burness, for many years a planter in the Lakhimpur 

 district, was singularly successful in obtaining specimens of this fine 

 duck, although, before being told, he did not appreciate the value of 

 the beautiful birds, and shot and ate them. 



All along the foot-hills of the Himalayas there stretches a vast 

 strip of virgin forest, devoid of all cultivation of any sort whatever, 

 but a good deal broken up by swamps and lakes, some so tiny that 

 the trees almost meet over their black stillness, others so wide and 

 big that there may be miles between their opposite banks. 



In such places as these, especially where pieces of water of the 

 smaller description are numerous, the Wood-Duck may be sought 

 almost with a certainty of success, and on lucky days Mr. Burness 

 would return with three, four, or even five birds, having seen 

 possibly twice as many, although the getting of them might have 

 entailed a walk of twenty miles or more. The birds were but 

 seldom seen by him in flocks, generally in pairs, often singly, and 

 never more than five or six birds together. Even in the deepest, 

 darkest woods they were most wary and difficult to appx-oach, and 

 took to flight at the sound of anyone coming within shot. When 

 wounded, they never dived, but at once swam to the nearest shore, 

 and scrambling into the woods concealed themselves in the dense 

 undergrowth. 



