INDIAN DUCKS AND THEIR ALLIES. 1?5 



with one another. Here a pair of Nukhtas formed part of a bag of 140 

 couple of duck and teal got by my father, Mr. T. Wilcox, and myself in 

 the Moolna bhil, a vast extent of swamp and water, covering fully 20 

 square miles of the country. This was in the cold weather, the end of Jan- 

 uary,! think, of 1882. In Cachar, Sylhet, and Looshai the-birds remain 

 all the year round and breed, as they do in most of the other parts of their 

 habitat, but in the Sunderbuns, I should think, they are, very probably, 

 migrants, though I have no evidence on this point. In Burma, Oates 

 reports them as common in Pegu, and it is almost certain that they have 

 been, or will be, recorded throughout that Province extending through 

 the Indo-Burmese countries. 



Out of India their habitat may be described roughly as Africa south 

 of the Sahara, and they are also found in Madagascar, though they do not 

 seem particularly common there. Hume says that they do not ascend the 

 hills, but here and in Looshai they are, at all events, found up to about 

 2,000 feet if not considerably higher. Mr. C. Gr. Scott, an Engineer on the 

 Assam-Bengal Railway, told me,.only a few dayspriorto this being writ- 

 ten, that late in April one of these birds flew quite close to him as he was 

 walking down one of the cuttings at an elevation close on 2,000 feet, and 

 the bird, a drake, was then flying steadily up the valley. I have seen 

 Nukhtas myself, a pair of them, in the Mahor Valley at heights ranging 

 between 1,500 and 2,000 feet, and once I heard its hoarse cry in the Jiri 

 Valley at least as high as the latter elevation. I know, for a certainty, 

 that they breed up to at least 2,000 feet, and I am almost sure that a pair 

 had their nest in the Mahor Valley even higher up than this. I was out 

 after sambhur at the time they were first seen. In the centre of some 

 heavy tree forest I came across a collection of small grassy swamps, vary- 

 ing from some one to two hundred yards in diameter. All round these 

 were lofty trees, and wherever there was sufficient dry land, others were 

 dotted about in between the pools. 



On my approaching the open two Nukhtas flew from one of the trees 

 uttering their loud calls repeatedly. Instead, however, of flying straight 

 away, they continued to fly round and round in great excitement and 

 refused to leave the place even after I had fired at and missed a deer. 



The sort of ground they prefer has been variously described by different 

 writers. Here they keep much to water in forest, and more especially 

 to such as is well covered with weeds and grasses and not of the clearest 



