294 THE FOOD OF BIRDS IN INDIA. 



1590. Dendrocycna fulva. Large Whistling Teal. 



Their food during the cold season consisted mainly of rice, 

 but they are very miscellaneous feeders, and I have found in their 

 stomachs, not only all kinds of aquatic seeds, bulbs, leaf-shoots, 

 and buds, grass and rush, but small shells, insects, worms, and 

 larvae, and on one occasion a tiny frog. Still, grains of rice, wild 

 and cultivated, constituted the bulk of their food. H. M. G. B. 

 Ill, 121. 



These duck or teal are practically as omnivorous as is the 

 domesticated duck, and will eat almost anything they can get 

 hold of, preferring perhaps a vegetarian to a meat diet. S. B. I. 

 D. A., 96. 



1591. Nettopus coromandelianus. Cotton Teal. 



Rice grains, especially the seed of the wild rice known as 

 " Pasiae " in Upper India, and of the shoots of various kinds of 

 aquatic plants, water insects, and their " larvae/' Minute fishes 

 and fresh-water crustaceans ? H. M. G. B. Ill, 104. 



1592. Anas boscas. Mallard. 



(Macgillivray) " Seeds of Graminese and other plants, fleshy 

 and fibrous roots, worms, mollusca, insects, small reptiks, ard 

 fishes are the principal objects of its search." H. M. G. B. Ill, 

 154. 



Chiefly on vegetable food, though it occasionally feeds on 

 Crustacea, mollusca, frogs, or, fish. F. I. IV, 436. 



1593. Anas pcecikrhyncha. Spotted-billed Duck. 



They are very miscellaneous feeders, and I have found woiirs, 

 small frogs, and insects and their larvae in their stomachs; but 

 grain (wild rice by preference), and all kinds of rush, grass and 

 water-plants and their roots, constitute the bulk of their food, 

 and "I have often examined birds that had fed on vegetable 

 matter only." H. M. G. B. Ill, 167. 



They are principally vegetable feeders, and do a good deal of 

 damage to rice, both when young and when in the ear, trampling 

 down a great deal more than they eat ; they also, at times, eat 



