120 INDIAN DICKS. 



camp, the birds still ejecting their cries at nie as I went my way. A gun 

 obtained, I strolled back and was greeted by the Vjirds with the same 

 ejaculation. Then I prepared to stalk, and waiting until the birds were 

 not looking, sank out o£ sight into some stubble : the Brahminies got up 

 and flew off. 



The next pair I came across spotted me just as I 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 the 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 weather on 

 a rock-bound coast. Scores of boats conveying the richer pilgrims to a 

 shallow of special sanctity, a hundred yards below the point, were cease- 

 lessly flying backwards and forwards, crowded and crammed with human 

 beings, — hundreds of gaudy flags were fluttering from the topmost jjoints 

 of gigantic Ixunboos, planted near the water's edge, — yet totally regardless 

 of sounds and sights that might have startled the boldest bird, the old 

 Brahminies dawdled about the opposing l)ank of the Ganges, distant 

 barely five hundred yards from the clamorous struggling rainbow-coloured 

 mass, as though the vagaries were no concern of theirs, and signified no 

 more than a convocation of ants." 



They are very carnivorous, and will take almost anything they can 

 get, including fish, flesh, and all kinds of grain, water-weeds, seed, and 

 growing crops, in which they are sometimes found grazing like geese. 

 There can be little doubt also that they sometimes fall so low as to take 

 to offal. 



Their flesh is distinctly bad, on a jiar with that of the Whistler and 

 the Cotton-Teal at their worst, and little better than that of the White-eve 

 or Shoveller. 



The Kuddy Sheldrake, though an emigrant from the plains of India, is 

 yet amongst the few^ ducks which breed within our limits, as it frequents 

 many of the lofty valleys of the Himalayas for this purpose. It has not 

 been found to Ijreed there below 10,000 feet, and Hume says its nest has 

 been taken as high as 16,000 feet. 



