34 INDIAN DUCKS. 



and others again in wliich tliere were only a few small spots near tlie tip 

 and base. 



The base of the upper mandible is never swollen or red in colour. Irides are 

 brown, never, / tJnnl; red-brown, and certainly never blood-red. 



Weight 43 to 6| lbs. 



Wing 12 to 14 inches, tail 5 to 7, culmen 2*2 to 2-4, tarsus 2-1 to 2*4. 



It does not seem necessary here to quote other authors in reference to 

 olorations, size, weight, &c., as a very large number of these birds have passed 

 through my hands or have been kept by me in captivity, and my own notes 

 include all the information given by others. 



This is one of tlio most rare and little-known of our Clieiioniorplue, and 

 the records regarding- its distribution are very limited. Bljth's remarks 

 as to their occurrence in Burmah probably do not r(>fer to tliis duck at all, 

 and are due to some mistake. From what he says, one would imagine the 

 White-winged Duck to be a very common bird in certain parts of that 

 country ; yet Hume says, in vol. vi. of ' Stray Feathers,' Davison has 

 examined the Valley of the Sittang, the Salween, the Attaran, the Gyn, 

 tli(^ Haung-Thaw, the Tavo}', and the Tenasserim, but yet he has never 

 seen or heard of this species. 



If it does occur in Tenasserim, it can onlv be as an extremely rare 

 straoolor. 



As regards Jerdon's letter to Hume, in which he mentions this bird as 

 congregating in large flocks, it is a pity we have not the date of it. In 

 18(54, when he finished his third volume of ' Birds of India.' Ik^ (evidently 

 looked on the bird as rare in the extreme. He talks of its orcurnnq in 

 Dacca and other parts of Eastern Bengal, but does not lead one to infer 

 that it was anything but uncommon even there. If his letter was Avritten 

 prior to 18G4, it may be taken for granted that in the ineanwhile Jerdon 

 had discovered his mistake, whilst if written after 18G4 it shows that 

 Jerdon made a mistake, which, as far as anyone knows, has never l)een 

 rectified. 



He says : — " I have seen several flocks of Casara leucoptem in the 

 lower parts of the Brahma})ootra, where it joins the Ganges, not far from 

 Dacca, where, indeed, Simson has seen it." Tw^enty years more added to 

 the years when Hume and his collectors worked the country above referred 

 to has shown that it could not possibly have been the Wood-Duck wdiich 

 Jerdon saw or referred to. That Simson saw it in Dacca certainly does 

 not prove that it inhal)its the Megna, Brahmapootra, and Ganges in 

 numbers, and to my own knowledge there has been no record of a single 

 specimen having been seen there for over twenty years. The only other 



