528 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR- 
bothering their heads at all about us. Some Pintail too 
allowed us to come up within twenty or thirty yards of them: 
After the first shot, however, nothing did we fire at under 
fifty yards, and most of the birds rose at a hundred. 
The Pintail come in enormous numbers to the Chilka; the 
flocks are dotted all over the lake, either alone or mixed with 
Blue-winged Teal and Shovellers. I have, on several occasions, 
come across flocks composed entirely of males and others en- 
tirely of females. On the 28th of March this year at Barkul 
I shot a brace out of a small party of 15 birds, all female 
Pintails. 
The Greylags too are very numerous, though not nearly 
so much so as dmser indicus ; they however are to be numbered 
by thousands and chiefly to be seen at Bhusandpur and Pari- 
kud; the latitude of the latter place is 19° 45’, or rather 
lower than you allow in the “ Game Birds of India.” The Ducks, 
which are least common on the Chilka, though they are to be 
met with in fair numbers in special portions of the lake, are 
the Fuligula rufina and nyroca, Sarcidiornis melanonotus and 
Anas pecilorhyncha. The last two are found in greater num- 
bers in the fresh-water jhils inland, chiefly about Banki, Haldia 
and Kalapathar. 
I have nevertheless shot several Grey Duck on the Chilka, 
which, considering that the water is brackish, is rather un- 
common. I ‘have never seen them feeding there, and my im- 
pression is that they feed inland on fresh-water jhils at night, 
flying to the Chilka by day for protection. ; 
The Pink-headed Duck has not been seen on the Chilka. 
My father has only seen and shot it at Kalapathar, not far from 
the Mahanadi river. The natives say it breeds there ; anyhow 
it is a rare bird in Khorda. The Comb Duck breeds on the 
estate as do the two kinds of Whistling Teal, the Cotton Teal 
and the Grey Duck. Nalbana, a large marshy island covered 
with reeds in the Chilka lake, is a great place in the rains 
for nests of wild fowl. This information has been derived 
chiefly from natives, as neither my father nor self have looked 
into the nidification of birds except in a most desultory manner. 
I have only seen and shot Dendrocygna fulva twice. Once 
my brother and myself obtained six out of a flock of about 
twenty on a jhil on the Madras Trunk Road, about seven miles 
south of Cuttack, and last month I shot a brace out of a party 
of seven that I found on a jhil about two miles from Jenkia 
and 15 miles south of Khorda. 
Dendrocygna javanica are very common, both in immense 
flocks of several thousands on the Chilka and in much 
smaller parties on many jhils and tanks. The Gadwall 
