INDIAN DUCKS AND THEIR ALLIES. 559 



which ran far out into the larger bheels. One or two observers have 

 said that they are more river and clear water frequenters than are 

 others of the genus, but this I have not myself confirmed. Every large 

 bheel and expanse of water which had cover on it contained more or 

 less of these birds, and many a tiny tank or rush and weed covered back- 

 water held its flock ; but I have never yet met -with them on the open 

 rivers of the Ganges and Brahmapootra, though I have visited them 

 often, and though these run through their favourite haunts. 



These ducks, or teal, are practically as omnivorous as is the domes- 

 ticated duck, and will eat almost anything they can get hold of, pre- 

 ferring perhaps a vegetarian to a meat diet. 



I can give no thrilling accounts of shooting these teal, as they are not 

 considered game in Bengal, and when we do shoot them we do not talk 

 of it. Of course a good many are shot for the servants, boatmen, etc., 

 who enjoy them immensely, and the fishier they are the more tasty they 

 consider them. 1 have noticed no difference in the flavour of the two 

 species of whistler, and cannot say I think much of either ; they do not 

 make bad curry or muligatawny soup when one can get nothing else, 

 and I have eaten them in preference to the domestic moorghi, but at this 

 point my praise of them as an edible quantity must end. 



I took a few nests of this teal in Rungpur, where however the bird 

 was not common, one in Nadia, and a few in the Sundarbans. My first 

 nests were all taken in the latter place, and were nearly all placed on 

 small trees, often babool or similar ones, standing on tiny islands in the 

 centre of large bheels. With one exception I think the birds had made 

 the nests themselves ; they were very roughly put together of twigs, 

 sticks and grass, and in a few cases covered, one can hardly say lined, 

 with dirty masses of weeds. They averaged some 18" across and were 

 placed, not so often in forks, as on tangles of branches ; sometimes, of 

 course in forks, and at other times where the first few big branches 

 sprung from the bole of a large tree. One nest was placed in the crown 

 of a date palm — one of a small clump which stood on a little hillock 

 where there had been built the dirty and desolate little hut of some 

 fisher family. This had been deserted, probably the former year, and the 

 Whistling Teal reigned over the knoll and its contents. 



One nest, from its size and construction, must have been made 

 by a fishing eagle, numbers of which breed in these same haunts, 



