FORESTS OF GORAKHPUR AND NEPAL TERAI 247 



kept by the natives tame. It readily learns to talk, and 

 is an amusing pet. There are a great many parrots, of 

 seventeen species. There are deep, silent ponds in the 

 dense forest, surrounded by giant gnarled stems of trees, 

 on the branches of which gray-necked snake-birds,* 

 with long, serpent-like necks, sit ready to pounce into the 

 still water below. Tortoises sit on the bank and sun 

 themselves. There are kingfishers of several sizes, which 

 poise themselves on rapid wing and drop like a stone on 

 the unsuspecting fish, spearing him with their sharp, 

 strong bills. 



The whole surface of the pond is covered with wild 

 fowl of many kinds. The beautiful garganey ducks and 

 others sit close together, with white breast and harlequin 

 patches of bright colour. There are little blue tealf 

 flitting in wisps, and whistling teal|, besides all the Euro- 

 pean sorts. A gun being discharged among them produces 

 enough fowl for a week's eating, and the air is full of clouds 

 of ducks whizzing and circling all round. They migrate 

 northwards to the plateau of Tibet for the breeding season, 

 when the snow melts, and return to southern India in 

 the winter again. To pick them up, one can charter a 

 rickety dug-out canoe made of a long tree, which belongs 

 to the teal-catchers. Most bungalows in Gorakhpur have 

 a teal house, a circular brick building arched over, with 

 a pond in the centre neatly shaped in chunam, where the 

 teal are fattened in absolute darkness for the sahib's 

 table in the hot weather, when meat will not keep. How 

 they are netted is a mystery I could never penetrate — 

 probably it is on the principle of our decoy pipes, though 



* Plotus melanogasier, a cormorant-like bird, with a powerful 

 straight-pointed bill, which swims under water after fish, and usually 

 when it comes up protrudes only its head above the surface. 



t Querquedula circia. 



% Nettapus Coromandelianus., whose cry resembles ' Fix bayonets !' 



