io6 Manual of the Game Birds of India. 



duck. According to Mr. Stuart Baker 

 it also utters loud trumpet-calls. When 

 wounded this species dives well and is 

 very difficult to catch. 



The Comb-Duck breeds in the rainy 

 season from the end of June to September, 

 according to locality and rainfall, but in 

 Ceylon it appears to breed in February 

 and March. 



The nest is almost invariably built in 

 a natural hollow of a large tree, or on 

 a fork formed by three or four large 

 branches. It is sometimes, however, 

 placed I in holes of old ruined forts, and 

 sometimes the Comb-Duck appropriates 

 the deserted nest of some large bird of 

 prey. Mr. Hume once found a nest in 

 a regular swamp at one end of 2ijhil, in 

 amongst a thick growth of sedge and rush. 

 Mr. E. H. Aitken once found the nest 

 in a hole in a bank of a stream, as 

 recorded in the Journal of the Bombay 

 Natural History Society. I reproduce a 

 portion of Mr. Aitken's note. He says :— - 



*' On the 30th of August, eighteen years 

 ago, I was wandering about with my 

 gun on the banks of a small brackish 

 stream, near Kharagora, when a female 

 Comb-Duck got up and went off. I fired 

 and missed her. She flew on for some 



