198 INDIAN UUCKS 



Japau. The extreme north of China, Mougoha, Manchuria, and 

 perhaps Korea, it seems only to visit on migration, its summer 

 home being northern Asiatic Kussia and Siberia. 



Halvadori says that it " straggles into the western Palaearctic 

 region (Italy and France)." And, again, in Latham's ' General 

 Synopsis of Birds' (17S0), I find the following under the heading 

 of Aiu(.i gliicitans : — 



" Taken in ii deco\- in England, lias also been met with along 

 the Ijena and aliout the Lake Baikal. Has a singular nolo sonie- 

 •\vhat like chicking." 



"Within Indian limits its occurrence has been of the rarest. 

 Blyth got a male in the Calcutta bazaar. Colonel McMaster says 

 that he got what he believed was a specimen of this species in 

 the Upper Sircars. Mr. E. James had a painting of the head of a 

 teal, said to have been shot in Sind, which was undoubtedly — the 

 painting — that of this species. In November, 1879, Mr. Chill got 

 a male Clucking Teal about thirty miles south of Delhi ; this he 

 preserved and sent to Hume. Thus up to Hume's time the records 

 of its actual occurrence are but two in number and of its possible 

 occurrence but two more. 



Since then ten more specimens have been obtained. On the 

 KJth December, 1898, Mr. E. L. Barton, of Bombay, shot a male 

 Clucking Teal about twenty miles from Ahmedabad, in Guzerat, 

 and the skin is now in the collection of the Bombay Natural History 

 Society. 



Colonel Eow, 8th Goorkhas, shot one in the Dibrugarh district 

 of Assam ; Messrs. Eden and Harrison each shot one in Eastern 

 Assam in 1912 ; Higgins obtained one in INIanipur in 1913, and a 

 second in 1916 ; De Vitre had two trapped birds brought to him in 

 Behar in 1907 ; Aitken obtained one in Lyallpur in 1909, and finally 

 Hope-Simpson shot one in Goruckpore in 1918. 



Nidification. — As regards the breeding, the two notes quoted by 

 Hume are all there are on record. 



Middendorff says : — • 



" Although the commonest duck on the Boganida (70 degrees 

 north latitude) it did not occur as far north as the Taimyr Eiver. 

 It was not observed Ijefore the li^th June on the Boganida. On 



