100 WATER FOWL OF TINDIX AND -ASTA. 
size and build, though not showing the fringing of the 
bill externally. 
The male only shows remarkable peculiarities. These 
are a bushy, silky, mane-like crest, long sabre-shaped 
tertiaries, and tail-coverts so ample as to cover the tail 
completely. The female is quite an ordinary-looking 
Duck. 
The male’s head is bronze and green ; the throat and 
fore neck white with a dark green collar below the mid- 
dle ; the body plumage resembles that of the Gadwall, 
with a coarsely mottled breast and finely pencilled body, 
but the colours are pure black and white, making a clear 
delicate grey in combination. The wings are plain grey 
with a black-green bar ; the rump black, and the stern 
black in the middle and yellow-buff at the sides. The 
long hanging plumes in the wings are black with pale 
grey borders, and do not show till the rest of the male 
plumage is fully developed. The bill is black, the eyes 
dark, and the feet grey. The female is almost exactly 
like the female Gadwall, but the wing-bar is black, some- 
times edged with white, and the feet grey, so that she 
can easily be distinguished from that bird. The bill is 
also entirely black, while the Gadwall’s is orange 
below at all events. The young and the male in undress 
resemble the female, but the latter shows some green 
gloss on the head. 
The Bronze-cap is common in Eastern Asia, breeding 
in Siberia, where it nests on the ground, and lays up to 
ten cream-coloured eggs, and wintering to the southward 
in China, Japan, &c. To the westward it is rare, though 
it even extends to Europe at times ; but it occasionally 
visits India and Upper Burma in winter ; it has also twice 
occurred in Manipur.* No doubt the female often gets 
passed over as a female Gadwall ; and during my time 
we had quite a rush of this species, as we had of Ber’s 
* A specimen procured there was inthe Indian Museum, presented 
by the late proprietor of Ze Aszan. 
