130 INDIAN DUCKS 



reminded me much of ancient prints on duck-shooting, the birds 

 with their long necks outstretched rising straight up for some 

 height until they got fairly started, when they flew ofi' parallel with 

 the water, generally about thirty or forty feet up, and not very fast 

 in spite of their noisy flight. Hume, Legge, and many others 

 have mentioned the rapidity with which they beat their wings, 

 and have also noted the smallness of the result when compared with 

 the amount of exertion used. When found in small flocks, that is 

 to say, up to about fifty or so, on tanks, ponds, and small pieces of 

 water, they often fly round and round the place before leaving it, 

 and more particularly is this the case when, there being no other 

 water very close by, they are loath to quit the piece from which 

 they have been roused. In the vast pieces of water in the delta 

 of the Ganges I did not notice this habit so much. When first 

 disturbed, and the birds get up all at once, it would seem that they 

 form a flock numbering some thousands ; but they soon divide into 

 smaller ones, seldom numbering over two or three hundred, and 

 then with a preliminary wheel or two fly off to some other part 

 of the swamp. Why they should be so wild in the Sunderbands 

 and yet so tame in most parts of their habitat, I cannot explain. 

 They are not much shot at, as the inhabitants are nearly all fisher- 

 people who possess but few guns, and who get their duck by 

 driving them into nets and not by shooting them. 



I have never, in any part of Bengal, known them to be so tame 

 as to require stoning to induce them to leave a tree, as Hume says 

 is necessary in many parts ; yet in Kungpur, Furreedpur, and some 

 other districts they are so confiding that to get a sitting shot would 

 be a very easy feat were it desirable, and the birds do not fly until 

 the last moment. They perch very freely on trees, even during 

 the non-breeding season, but I think that, as a rule, they rest, 

 when in flocks, on the water and not on trees, though sometimes, 

 of course, they do rest during the heat of the day on trees. Hume, 

 indeed, says they generally rest thus, and this habit again may be 

 one of locality, varying in the different parts they affect. 



At night I think they roost almost invariably on trees, and even 

 where they are shy and wild, and feed in the evening and early 

 morning, the middle of the night is probably passed roosting on trees. 



