DENDROCYCNA FULVA 117 



Captain Shelley reports ('Ibis,' 1894, p. 28), four birds from 

 Lake Shirwa in Nyasaland, mentioning that it is the first case he 

 knew of in which the birds had been found so far south. 



The distribution of this duck is the more remarkable when we 

 consider that it is not a mifjratory bird, or, at all events, only so in 

 a partial manner, as influenced by the want of water, See. Thus it 

 is a resident inhabitant of various tracts of country, large in them- 

 selves, but very widely separated from one another, yet never, as 

 far as is known, occurring in the intervening parts. 



Nidifioation. — I took a few nests of this teal in Eungpur, where, 

 however, the bird is not common, one in Nadia, and a few in the 

 Sundurbands. My first nests were taken in the latter place, and 

 were nearly all placed on small trees, often babool or similar ones, 

 standing on tiny islands in the centre of large bheels. With one 

 exception, I think the birds had made the nests themselves. They 

 were very roughly put together of twigs, sticks, and grass, and in a 

 few cases covered — one can hardly say lined — with dirty masses of 

 weeds. The}' averaged some eighteen inches across, and were placed 

 not so often in forks as on tangles of branches, sometimes, of course, 

 in forks, and at other times where the first few big branches run from 

 the bole of a large tree. One nest was placed in the crown of a 

 date-palm, one of a small clump that stood on a little hillock where 

 there had been built the dirty and desolate little hut of some fisher- 

 family. This had been deserted, probably the preceding year, and 

 the Whistling-Teal reigned over the knoll and its contents. 



One nest, from its size and construction, must have been made 

 by a fishing-eagle, numbers of which breed in these same haunts, 

 and doubtless also vary their usual diet with a duckling every now 

 and then. 



In Nadia I took one nest of this species only, and I do not 

 remember seeing any more of these birds in that district. 

 Krishnaghar, the headquarters town of Nadia, evidently once boasted 

 a sporting community, as there is a racecourse — and a good one too 

 — about a mile and a half from the station. Dotted here and there 

 about the centre, and on the outskirts of this racecourse, there are 

 a number of small tanks, all densely covered with weeds and sur- 

 rounded by a thick fringe of bushes and trees, which afforded good 



