148 INHTAN DUCKS 



their cries at me as I went my way. A gun obtained, I strolled 

 back and was greeted by the birds with the same ejaculation. Then 

 I prepared to stalk, and waiting until the birds were not looking, 

 sank out of sight into some stubble ; the Brahminies got up and 

 flew off. 



The next pair I came across spotted me just as I got through 

 the first half of a stalk, and the third must have seen me all the 

 time, getting on the wing when I was still twenty or thirty yards 

 too far to shoot. 



Hume gives a most excellent example of their fearlessness under 

 what they consider proper circumstances : — 



"At Allahabad, at the sacred juncture of the Jumna and the 

 Ganges, I noticed during a great fair, which is held on a spit of sand 

 at whose apex the rivers meet, two pairs of these ducks, placidly 

 performing their own ablutions, just opposite where some 200,000 

 people, densely packed, were bathing. The hum, the roar, I sbould 

 say, of the mighty multitude sounded a mile off like the surge of 

 wind and waves in stormy weather on a rock-bound coast. Scores 

 of boats conveying the richest pilgrims to a shallow of special 

 sanctity, a hundred yards below the point, were ceaselessly plying 

 backwards and forwards, crowded and crammed with human beings. 

 Hundreds of gaudy flags were fluttering from the topmost points of 

 gigantic bamboos, planted near the water's edge, yet, totally regard- 

 less of sounds and sights that might have startled the boldest bird, 

 the old Brahminies dawdled about the opposing bank of the Ganges, 

 distant barely 500 yards from the clamorous struggling rainbow- 

 coloured mass, as though the vagaries were no concern of theirs, 

 and signified no more than a convocation of ants." 



They are very omnivorous, and will take almost anything they 

 can get, including fish, flesh, and all sorts of grain, water-weeds, 

 seed, and growing crops, in which they are sometimes found grazing 

 like geese. There can be little doubt also that they sometimes fall 

 so low as to take to offal. 



Their flesh is distinctly bad, on a par with that of the whistler 

 and the cotton-teal at their worst, and little better than that of the 

 white-eye or shoveller. 



