224 INDIAN DUCKS. 



A young male in mj^ possession has the whole bead mottled brown and 

 black, the new black feathers showing the sheen of the usual green gloss ; the 

 breast is a queer mixture of dirty yellowish-brown and the deep rufous or bay of 

 the adult bird ; the lower abdomen and vent are mixed brown and white. 



Another young male exactly answers to the description above given for the 

 female, but that the definition between breast and abdomen is very sharp, and 

 the olive gloss on the wing is highly developed. 



Baer's Pochard is the Eastern form of the Common AVhite-eyed Pochard, to 

 which it is very closely allied, yet, as far as fully adult birds are concerned, from 

 whicb it is very easily distinguishable. It would appear to average a much 

 heavier, bidkier bird ; and all the birds in my collection, among them two 

 received from Mr. Finn, have proportionately the bill much larger, both longer 

 and wider, Neither Blanford, Salvadori, nor anyone else, as far as I can gather, 

 seems to have noticed this ; but to me, when specimens of the two species lie 

 side by side, this vast difference in the bills is what first draws attention. 



Of course, my series is a very small one, and it is quite possible that large 

 series might show intermediate sizes in both species. 



Its range extends, according to Salvadori, from Kamtschatka to 

 Shanghai and Japan, descending south in winter into India, and almost 

 certainly into South China and Burmah. 



Mr. Finn, who has kindly given me carte hlanclie to use his notes, thus 

 sums up the records of its appearance in India : — 



" It was apparently obtained in Bengal in 1825, and Blyth certainly 

 got one female in the ('alcutta Bazaar in 1842 or 184i)j but did not identify 

 it, which is not surprising, seeing that it had not been recognised as a 

 species. Then, at the end of February 1896, I got eleven full-plumaged 

 birds, and since then the species has come in greater or less numbers every 

 cold w'eather. I have got three males and a female this month (the former 

 from a dealer) and saw what was either a small dull female or a hybrid 

 with the Common "White-eye about the middle of January. "\Ve have other 

 birds in plumage intermediate between the A\'hite-eyes, and I therefore 

 now think that they interbreed." 



Mr. Finn does not think that Baer's Pochard has been a common form 

 merely overlooked. Certainly, as he says to me in ejnstold, Baer's Pochard 

 when adult cannot well be mistaken for the Common White-eye. Blyth's 

 bird was a young female and therefore, of course, very nmch like a 

 C'ommon White-eye. It maybe, therefore, that there was just a temporary, 

 unaccountable rush of this species to India, and that it will again cease. 



At the same time it seems prol)able from his observations in Calcutta 

 that the Eastern White-eye will prove to be a regular and not uncommon 

 visitor to the north-eastern parts of India, and, almost equally surely, to 



