QL'ERQUEDl'LA CIRCIA. 193 



two, three, or more times, and then disappeared, but often only to settle 

 half a mile or so further on. The Garganey also rose quicker off the 

 water, getting up obliquely, and were quicker away ; again, when wounded 

 they swam faster away than the Common Teal, and though by no means 

 first-class divers, yet they were good enough to be able often to escape us 

 by this means. 



As to whether they are wild or tame, o})inions seem to differ very 

 much. Theobald says : " They are not very hard to shoot, and are easily 

 approached behind a small screen of green boughs ; sometimes a paper kite, 

 made in the shape of a hawk and flown over the tanks, keeps the Teal 

 together, and they will not leave the tanks though fired at often." 

 Dresser, speaking of the Garganey in Europe, and quoting Baron Droste, 

 actually says : " They are very tame, and soon get accustomed to the sight 

 of human beings.^' Reid says that they are shy and wild when they first 

 arrive (in Lucknow), but afterwards become tamer. Hume says that they 

 are never tame and generally decidedly wild. As far as my experience 

 goes, I have found that the Garganey is one of the wildest of the duck 

 tribe ; even when the would-be shooter keeps behind screens, &c., they seem 

 to be very cute, and to be able to discern what is behind the screen quicker 

 than many others of their kind, and they are not slow to profit by what 

 they can discern. 



Then, too, they keep much to fairly open water when resting, and 

 a sudden appearance of a detached clump of weeds floating towards 

 them at once i)uts them on the (jui vive, and long before the clump 

 gets within shooting distance, two out of three times they leave for safer 

 abodes. 



I once, however, came on a fiock of these little birds who stuck more 

 persistently to their ground, or water, than any other flock of ducks it has 

 been my fortune to meet. This was in the district of Hazaribagh, and I 

 was going from Giridi to Hazaribagh in a jnish-j>us/i, a sort of four-wheeled, 

 inferior, springless brougham, when I saw a flock of about forty Teal on a 

 tank close by the road. I got out of the push-push, walked up to the tank, 

 and got two birds with a right and left as they rose ; the lairds wheeled round 

 and I ii'ot a third ; thev then went to another tank OOO vai'ds awav, and, 

 as I followed them up, again rose and returned to the first piece of water, 

 leading a fourth bird with me. I, too, went l)ack and got yet another brace, 

 and after these yet another bird on the second })iece of water, and when 

 I left with seven Teal the rest were already back on the tank by the load. 

 This was, of course, in a badly watered part of tlie counti'y, but on no otlu'i- 



o 



