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



movements of its wings are less rapid than the majority of the Anatidce 

 and give one the impression that its progress is far slower than it really 

 is. They are good walkers, and though generally their movements are 

 marked more hy their dignity and deliberation than haste, they are 

 capable of very good performances as pedestrians. Their attitudes on 

 land are more those of geese than of ducks. 



They are not at all shy birds, nor are they at all wild in the ordinary 

 acceptation of the word. They object to anyone coming within shot, but 

 when outside that distance seem to have nothing to say against being 

 watched and remarked upon. I was introduced to Chakwa and Chakwi 

 in the Santhal Parganas a very short time after I came to India. I was 

 engaged in camping across the district and generally riding ahead of my 

 belongings would arrive at the next camping ground some hours before 

 they came up. One of these grounds was on, or close to, the sandy 

 banks of a river, and of course the interval between arrival and break- 

 fast was filled up by strolling about. Two Brahminy ducks soon 

 attracted my attention, and though I was within about one hundred and 

 fifty yards they took no notice of me but sat on one leg basking in the 

 sun and now and then uttering a single low conk, not a note of alarm 

 but one which seemed to me at the time to be of overweening pride 

 and misplaced confidence. Later on I found out where these qualities 

 should have been looked for. I strolled back to camp, the birds still 

 ejecting their cries at me as I went my way. A gun obtained I strolled 

 back and was greeted by the birds with the same ejaculation. Then I 

 prepared tc stalk and waiting until the birds were not looking sank out 

 of sight into some stubble ; the Brahminies got up and flew off. 



The next pair I came across spotted me just as 1 had got through the 

 first half of a stalk, and the third must have seen me all the time, getting 

 on the wing when I was still twenty or thirty yards too far to shoot. 



Hume gives a most excellent example of their fearlessness under what 

 they consider proper circumstances. 



" At Allahabad at the sacred juncture of the Jumna and Ganges I 

 noticed during a great fair, which is held on a spot of sand, at whose 

 apex the rivers meet, two pairs of these ducks, placidly performing 

 their own ablutions just opposite where some 200,000 people, densely 

 packed, were bathing. The hum, the roar, I should say, of the mighty 

 multitude sounded a mile off like the surge of wind and waves in stormy 



