10 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCTETY, Vol, XffT. 
Assam also. Recently it has been recorded as having been shot in 
Burma, near Mandalay, and it will doubtless prove to occur sparingly 
throughout the northern half at least of that province. 
This Pochard is one which essentially requires open water, and in 
preterence it resorts to wide expanses of water of some considerable 
depth in the centre, though more or less weed and. rush overgrown 
round the shores. Where such pieces of water are to be found the 
Tufted Pochard may be obtained in no inconsiderable numbers ; at the 
same time it is unusual to find them in any but small parties, and pairs 
and single birds are more often to be met with than even such. Some 
times, however, they do consort in very large numbers, vide Hume, 
who says single birds or small parties may be found on almost any 
broad in which the water is tolerably deep in some places, but the 
huge flocks in which they love to congregate are only met with on 
large lakes, such as I have above referred to. 
At the Manchar Lake I saw two enormous flocks. I have repeat- 
edly seen similar flocks in old times at the Najjafgarh and other vast 
jhils in the Punjab, the North-West Provinces and Oudh, and I 
should guess that at the Kunkrowli Lake, in Oodeypore, there must 
have been nearly ten thousand, covering the whole centre of the lake. 
Such flocks as these are, however, only to be met with in the pro- 
vioces mentioned; here, in the Eastern Provinces, a flock of forty is 
very large, and about all we may expect to meet with. 
Just as expert as are the rest of Pochards on or in the water, it 
excels the majority of these—perhaps not WV. baeri—in getting away 
from it. It is said to rise with less fluster, noise and splashing than 
is caused by the rising of other Pochards, and also to get off the water 
more quickly and to get more quickly into its stride, if I may use such 
an expression. On land, however, feeble as are other Pochards, this, 
according to Finn, is worse still. He says in the Asian: “On land 
it moves more awkwardly than any other Pochard I know, hobbling as 
if lame in both feet.” 
However abundant it may be, the Tufted Pochard does not, as a 
rule, form a very large proportion of the bag ina day’s shoot. This 
is due to the difficulty, first in approaching the birds—for they are 
decidedly wild and shy—and secondly in getting a shot when once 
one has got within reach. Ifthe bird does not escape at once by 
e 
