30 INDIAN DL'CKS. 



of viroin forest, devoid of all cultivation of any sort whatever, Imt a good 

 deal broken x\p )>v swamps and lakes, some so tiny that the trees almost 

 meet over their black stillness, others so wide and liig that there may be 

 miles between their opposite banks. In such places as these, especially 

 wdiere pieces of water of the smaller description are numerous, the \Vood- 

 Duck may l)e sought almost Avith a certainty of success, and on lucky 

 days Mr. Burness would return with three, four, or even five birds, and 

 have seen possil:)ly twice as many again, although the getting of them 

 might have entailed a walk of twenty miles or more. The birds were but 

 seldom seen bv him in flocks, generally in pairs, often singly, and never 

 more than five or six birds together. Even in the deepest, darkest woods 

 thev were most wary and difficult to approach, and took to flight at the 

 sound of anyone coming within shot. When wounded, they "er^r dived, 

 but at once swam to the nearest shore, and scrambling into the woods 

 concealed themselves in the dense undergrowth. 



The ducks, however, are not entirely confined to such country, and are 

 frequentlv met with in smaller patches of jungle in which there are pools 

 and swamps, and I have received numerous specimens shot in such ])laces. 

 Thev also frequent sluggish streams and Ijackwaters. l)Ut never, as iar as 

 my experience and information goes, clear waters or swiftly running 

 streams. 



Verv little infornialion ha- been forthcoming aljout their call and \('i-v 

 few sportsmen seem to ha\(> heard them. Colonel Graham has recoi'detl : 

 "They roost on trees, and frequent solitary pools in deep tree jungle. 

 They are always in pairs and may be heard calling to one another at great 

 distances." This agrees well with what I have known of them. My first 

 experience of them was in North Cacliar, when out shooting one i-ainy day 

 in June I heard two birds calling to one another in loud goose-like calls. 

 The forest was very dense and consisted almost entirely of trees, but 

 through it there wandered a sluggish dirty stream wiiich here and there 

 disappeared into small morasses dotted with tiny pools of clear water. 

 Thinking the safest way to get a shot would be to drive them, I sent my 

 Cachari tracker to beat down the stream towards me from the point some 

 two hundred yards or so above where we heard them calling. The drive 

 proved a total failure, as, though the birds flew within thirty or forty vards 

 of me, thev ke[)t inside the forest on the same side of the stream as tliat on 

 which I was seated, and I hardly caught a glimpse of tliem, nmch less 

 obtained a shot. The Cachari told me that when he came on the first one 

 it was in a tree, from whii-h it did not fiv until he was un(h'riu'atli. and that 



