m JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XI. 



and cleanest. One or two are always to be met with near Diyangmukh 

 on a nullah which runs through heavy forest, and in the cold weather is 

 reduced to a series of shallow pools. 



" Hume says : " It much prefers well- wooded tracts, not dense forests like 

 the White-winged Wood Duck, but well- wooded, level, well-cultivated 

 country. It is a lake bird too, one that chiefly affects rush and reed- 

 margiiled broads, not bare-edged pieces of water like the Sambhur Lake, 

 and it is comparatively rarely met with on our larger rivers. I have shot 

 them alike on the Ganges and the Jumna in the cold season, but it is far 

 more common to find them in jhils and bhils. I have never found it in 

 hilly ground and very rarely in small ponds " (the italics are mine) . . . 

 " Just when the rains first set in, they seem to be on the wing at all hours 

 of the day, and almost wherever you go in the North-West Provinces 

 you see them moving about, always in pairs, the male, as a rule, in 



front They never, as far as I have observed, associate in flocks. 



There may be half-a-dozen pairs about abroad in the rains, or half-a- 

 dozen families, each consisting of two old and from four to ten young 

 birds, during the early part of the cold season ; but I have never seen 

 them congregate in flocks as most geese and so many of the ducks do." 



Oates (vide " Birds of British Burmah ") seems to have found them in 

 much the same kind of places, and also in paddy-fields ; but he says that in 

 Burma it is found " singly, in pairs, or in small flocks of twenty or thirty 

 individuals." Jerdon, on the other hand, says that although it is generally 

 found only in small parties of four to ten individuals, yet it is sometimes 

 found in flocks numbering over a hundred. This, I should imagine, is 

 most unusual, and we may take it for granted that, as a rule, they go in 

 pairs only, except when they have a family, and that occasionally two or 

 more families join forces ; and, again, when the breeding season is over 

 the young and the full-grown are often to be found singly, the old 

 birds alone continuing to keep in pairs. 



The general concensus of opinion appears to be that they are not very 

 wary birds, and in consequence are not hard to bring to bag. Of course, 

 as Hume says, you cannot walk up to them and pot them as they swim 

 about unconcernedly on the water, but with comparatively little trouble 

 and oare one ought always to succeed in getting near enough for a shot, 

 unless the country surrounding them is utterly bare and destitute of cover 

 for the sportsman. Once disturbed, their flight, etc, is variously 



