Contributions to the Ornithology of India, S^c. 249^ 



901.— Hydrophasianus chirurgus, S'cop. 



We met with this on several of the larger inland lakes, but 

 nowhere in any considerable numbers. All the birds we saw were 

 of course in winter plumage. 



902. — Porphyrio neglectus, 8chl.~P. poUoee- 



phalus, Latham, apud Jerdon, 



In some of the rush over-grown lakes of Sindh, the purple 

 coot is excessively abundant ; unlike the common coot, and 

 water hens, they seem scarcely ever to shew themselves outside 

 the reeds, but when pushing through these in a boat, they rise 

 continually all about you, floundering up above the tops of the 

 rushes with a flapping noisy flight like that of a pea-fowl, 

 and, never rising more than a few yards in the air, again drop 

 at once after a short flight into some reedy thicket. The bird 

 when alive is certainly very beautiful; but in the skins not only 

 the color of bill and feet, but of the whole plumage fades so 

 much, that little trace of its natural beauty remains ; its eggs 

 which I have described elsewhere, are also when fresh amongst 

 the most beautiful that I know ; but they too alas, fiwle equally. 



Gray assigns Latham^s name to the Sultana coot of the Philip- 

 pines and Madagascar? I confess that if the birds from both 

 these localities are identical, it is difiicultj prima facie, to believe 

 that 02irs are distinct. 



903.— Fulica atra, L. 



Numerous as these birds are in our Norfolk broads where 

 about the commencement of the winter, they afford one or 

 two days grand fun, this is nothing to the multitudes that swarm 

 on the great inland broads of Sindh. On the Muncher lake I 

 believe they would have to be counted not by thousands but by 

 hundreds of thousands ; a square mile of water may be seen per- 

 fectly black with water-fowl, and although ducks of various des- 

 criptions do seem innumerable, they form scarcely one-tenth of 

 the floating herd, the great bulk of which consists of coots. When 

 a shot is fired near to them and they rise, the noise of their wings, 

 and of their feet striking the water, is like the roar of the sea upon 

 a shingly beach. You can shoot nothing without knocking over 

 some of these wretched coots. During the days I was at the 

 Muncher lake, I never once fired at one, and yet I daily killed 

 between twenty and thirty accidentally in shooting at ducks. In 

 no part of the world have I ever seen such incredible multitudes 

 of coots as are met with in Sindh ; in the Muncher lake par 

 eivceUence, but also in many others of the larger inland pieces of 

 water. 



