96 INDIAN DLCKS. 



large boughs and brunches, as they have no great grasping power, and 

 could not retain their hold on small ones, especially if there was any wind 

 to sway them about. As Hume remarks, this AVhistling-Teal is far more 

 often seen on land than is the smaller species, and he also notes their 

 goose-like gait. Their legs are, as we all know, set forward much as are 

 those of geese, and in consequence they naturally walk freely and well as 

 do those birds. I have noticed them resting during the heat of the day 

 on the spits of grass-covered land which run 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 backwater held its flock; but I have never yet met with 

 them on the open rivers of the Ganges and Brahma})Ootra, though I have 

 visited them often, and though these run through their favourite haunts. 



These duck, or teal, are practically as omnivorous as is the domesti- 

 cated duck, and will eat almost anything they can get hold of, preferring 

 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, &c., 

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

 consider them. I 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 mulligatawny sou]) when one can get nothing else, and 

 I have eaten them in preference to the domestic inoorqlil, 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 is not common, one in Nadia, and a few in the Sundurbands. 

 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 Ijhcels. 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 weed<. They average some 

 lb inches 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 run from the bole of a large tree. One nest was 

 placed in the crown of a date-palm — one of a -mail clump that -tood on a 



