INDIAN DUCKS AND THEIR ALLIES. 363 



head bars or the conspicuous white neck streaks ; back of neck wood- 

 brown ; sides and front of the lower part of the neck pale dusky- 

 greyish ; mottled with whitish ; most of the feathers of the breast and 

 abdomen have a pale rusty tinge towards the tips j the conspicuous 

 dark bandings of the flanks of the adult is almost entirely wanting ; 

 tail somewhat browner than in the adult." 



Young in down. — <c Pale yellowish, top of the head and upper parts 

 pale brown " (Salvadori). Koughly speaking the habitat of this goose 

 is India and Northern Burma, and the Shan States during winter, and 

 in summer Central Asia, due north of these countries up to about 

 latitude 55 N. 



The most southern point of which I Gan find any record is by Jerdon 

 in his " Birds of India." He writes : — " I once saw a couple of these 

 geese in the extreme south of India in August, in a small sequestered 

 tank. This pair may have been breeding there, but perhaps they were 

 wounded or sickly birds." It is quite possible that they were breeding, 

 but it is almost certain that one at least of the pair must have been damag- 

 ed in some way, sufficient to incapacitate it from migrating. They are 

 very devoted to one another, and probably if either of a pair of geese was 

 injured the other would remain with it. On the other hand they might 

 both have been geese or both ganders, in which case also, of course, both 

 must have been injured. In Southern India it is nowhere a common 

 bird. Major Mclnroy reported it as Gommon in the Chitaldroog District 

 of Mysore, and Mr. A. Theobold as not common in Coimbatore. In 

 the south of the Central Provinces it is still far from plentiful. In 

 Bengal it is met with in considerable numbers on all the larger rivers, 

 quite down to their mouths. I have seen great flocks of them both in 

 Jessore and Khulna in January. It is also found on the rivers running 

 through Behar, Chota Nagpur, etc., but is not common. In Assam it 

 is rare, but has been met with in Sylhet, Cachar and Manipur, and I 

 have also seen it in Kamrup, and it probably extends all up the 

 Brahmaputra. It is to the west of Bengal, however, that it is found 

 in such vast numbers, and in most parts there outnumbers all the other 

 geese by more than five to one. In Sind, however, the Grey Lag is 

 the more common, and it has not been obtained in Gujurat. 



Speaking broad ly, this goose is far more of a river than a lake or 

 tank bird, though it is, of course, also often found on the larger lakes 



