INDIA N D UCKS A ND THEIR A LL [ES. 1 95 



coolies, who like their flesh and eat it greedily, preferring them to more 

 delicately flavoured ducks. They ■ breed in great numbers in these vast 

 sheets of water on the little islands which are dotted about in all direc- 

 tions, and which contain from three or four up to a hundred trees or so. 

 Nor are they much molested when breeding, though now and then the 

 miserable fishermen, who are the only inhabitants of these watery, fever- 

 stricken parts, may take a clutch or two of eggs as food. In different 

 parts of India their habits also vary much. Hume writes : <c Tame and 

 familiar little birds, village ponds, at any rate where singhara are grown, 

 seem to be just as much affected as more secluded pieces of water. You 

 may often see half-a-dozen dabbling about in the water and weeds within 

 ten yards of the spot where the village washerman is noisily thrashing 

 the clothes of the community ; more suo on large stones or ribbed slabs 

 of wood, as if his one object in life was to knock everything into rags at 

 the earliest possible moment. Even the loud half grunt, half groan, 

 with which he relieves his feelings after each mighty thwack has no terror 

 for these little birds." 



The habitat of these remarkably domesticated Cotton Teal is not men- 

 tioned by Hume, but in Rungpore, though not quite so tame as the above 

 description shows them to be in some places, they take little notice of 

 passers-by, unless very closely approached. They squat in the roadside 

 ditches and tanks, and when finally leaving them, scuttle away, chatter- 

 ing and clucking for all they are worth, as if trying whether they could 

 vooiferate harder than fly, or vice versa, often only to return to some 

 spot within fifty or sixty yards of that just left. Their flight is decidedly 

 quick as well as fast, and they dodge round corners and avoid stumps and 

 other obstructions which come in their way, as -they .fly down the way- 

 side drains and ditches, with an activity quite wonderful. In addition 

 to their speed of flight they are very densely plumaged and tough, and 

 carry off a wonderful lot of shot for so small a bird. In the Sunderbuns 

 they are found alike in the very biggest and broadest stretches of 

 water as in the smallest ; only in the former they keep much to weedy 

 places with thick cover adjacent. In Rungpore, Furreedpore, Barisal, and 

 adjoining districts they keep more to small tanks, ditches and enclosed 

 bhils than to the larger, more open pieces of water, and this is said to 

 be their practise in most of the other parts of their habitat. Legge 

 says that they frequent sometimes the flooded lands close to the sea-shore. 



