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rising very obliquely ; nor does it rise high when well on the wing, 

 Imt generall\- flies within a few yards of the surface of the water, 

 getting on considerable pace when once fairly away. It requires 

 straight shooting to kill outright, for it is a hardy, close-pluiuaged 

 little bird, and will take a lot of shot. Hit, but not killed, it is very 

 far from caught, for it is a wonderful diver ; quick and strong under 

 water, it makes for the dense undergrowth, where it hides, or if 

 dropped in the open dives for such long periods and goes so far and 

 fast that the gunner never knows where to expect it, and when he 

 may get his second barrel into it. All its good qualities are, 

 however, quite overshadowed l)y the fact that when shot and caught 

 it is no longer worth anything, for so rank and coarse is the flesh 

 generally, that it is quite uneatable. The condemnation of the 

 White-eye as an article of food is not, however, universal ; thus, 

 Colonel Irby speaks of the bird as found in Spain : — 



" Its flesh is not only, like tliat of the Red-Headed and Red- 

 Crested Pochards, excellent eating, hut far surpasses either in that 

 respect." 



Even here, in India, Captain Baldwin once wrote : — 

 " It is only a tolerable bird for the table." 



But Mr. F. Finn goes one better than tolerable, and writes in 

 the ' Asian': "It is said to be very poor eating, luit I have found 

 it to be palatable enough." Tastes differ, however, and there may 

 be others to agree with INIessrs. Finn and Baldwin, but personally 

 I have nearly always found it unpalatable in the extreme — fishy, 

 oily, and rank, though on one occasion in Dibrugarh I shot some 

 which turned out really excellent eating. 



Omnivorous, like all ducks, this species probably makes its diet 

 fully three-quarters animal. Those birds which I shot in the Diyang 

 and other hill-streams had all (in addition to the caddis-grubs, 

 dragon-fly larvte, and similar articles) swallowed quite a number of 

 small fish, some of them three inches in length. These were all, 

 or nearly all, of the small ' Miller's Thumb ' species, so common in 

 every hill-stream. Doubtless these, from their sluggish disposition 

 and their ostrich-like habits of hiding their heads under a stone 

 and then resting in fancied security, fell a very easy prey to the 

 active White-eye. 



