INDIAN SPOT-BILL 
95 
Damage. They feed largely on rice and do considerable damage to the crop, 
both when it is young and when ripe (Baker, 1908). 
Food Value. Hume and Marshall (1879) class, it as second only to the Mallard 
and Pintail as a bird for the table, while Butler and Baker (1908) seem to consider 
it a close rival of the Mallard. It is said to be larger and more uniformly in good 
condition than that species, but at times it is thought to have a fishy flavor. 
Hunt. The Spot-bill is regarded as one of the best of the Indian sporting ducks. 
The hunters lie in wait for it on moonlit nights and sometimes use decoys. Numbers 
of the flappers are caught by the Mussulman Manipuris with spears and nets, and 
they sometimes form part of the bag when the natives of other parts of India have 
a duck-drive into nets (Baker, 1908). Hume and Marshall (1879) say the shikaris 
wade up to them with guns concealed behind bundles of floating rushes. Occasion- 
ally Spot-bills are caught by hand by the well-known method of wading in with only 
the disguised head of the hunter above the surface. 
Behavior in Captivity. This species was represented in the famous collection 
of the Earl of Derby at Knowsley, and was acquired by the London Zoological 
Society from that collection in 1851. It was not again imported until 1868, when 
several males were received. It first bred in London in 1874, and several times in 
the subsequent years. It was common in zoological gardens on the Continent by 
1880. In the Calcutta Gardens it bred in 1885 and has been bred often by private 
aviculturalists. 
The only pair I ever kept did not breed, but proved hardy, became very tame, and 
lived a number of years on my ponds until I finally sold them. 
Miss Hubbard foimd that Spot-bills could support considerable cold. Her birds 
laid in April and one nest contained twelve eggs, six of which produced young. 
Rogeron (1903) has nothing good to say about them from an avicultural view- 
point, and found that they triumphed over other species and were always crossing 
with Mallards, African Yellow-bills and Australian Ducks. Besides they were as 
greedy as Domestic Ducks with much more vigor and agility in their movements, a 
“sort of savage agility which completely lacks charm and grace.” Hybrids with the 
Mallard inherited, so he thought, all the “faults of character” of the Spot-bill parent. 
Captivity-bred strains are easy to rear and one female in Mr. Wormald’s (1922) 
ponds laid three different clutches of eggs in the summer of 1922. It is doubtful 
whether they ever breed until two years old, but more information is necessary. 
In England they sold at from £2 to £6 per pair before the War, and at the present 
time good hand-reared birds bring about £5 the pair. They are not very commonly 
imported into America, and bring only moderate prices, the New York Zoological 
