FORMOSAN TEAL 
251 
different quality to the two syllables, but the distinction is very subtle and impossible 
to describe. The female has a rather faint, but typically ducklike quack which is 
used as an alarm-note. Heinroth (1911) describes it as similar to that of the female 
Common Teal or female Yellow-billed Teal, a resounding quegquegquegquegqueg . 
The female has also been spoken of as occasionally bursting out “with a loud, harsh, 
jarring note, calling to mind the cry of some large Halcyon” (R. Swinhoe, 1867). I 
myself have never heard the female make any sound except when she was frightened 
or disturbed. 
The males are said to call even when on the wing (Prjevalski, 1878). The trachea 
of the male, as figured by Eyton (1838), has a dilatation at the bifurcation on the left 
side. It is very small and quite Teal-like. In my specimen it is only 10 mm. long 
by 7 mm. in breadth, scarcely the width of both bronchi. The trachea itself is 
simple in form and 140 mm. long. 
Food. I know of no analysis of food contents, and can only quote Seebohm’s 
(1892) note that in Tsushima hundreds of the birds are seen feeding in the rice-fields. 
Courtship and Nesting. The display in this species is described by Wormald 
(1907) and Finn (1915). The former says that when showing off “the drake lowers 
his head and then throws it up, at the same time elevating the feathers on the top 
of his head so that they appear almost like a crest, and muttering his note . . . 
which he keeps up for hours on end.” According to Finn the display is generally 
seen on land. He speaks of the bird erecting the plumage on its head so that this part 
seems larger than it really is, and then jerking the head back on the shoulders, cluck- 
ing vigorously. I have never seen my Formosan Teal throw the head back on the 
shoulders, but they do often throw out the feathers of the head and bob the head up 
and down. 
The breeding season appears to be rather late, though Baker (1908) says he has an 
egg in his collection taken in the Amur region on April 28. This date is, to say the 
least, very exceptional. In the Kolyma delta, Mr. J. Koren, collecting for Thayer and 
Bangs (1914) took an egg from the oviduct of a female that was ready for laying on 
June 7. Sets of fresh eggs were taken on June 19, 22, and 27. Riley (1918) records 
a clutch from the same region, which, on July 9, was five or six days ineubated. 
A. von Middendorff (1853) found fresh eggs on the lower Amur on July 3, and on 
the lower Jana eggs were found in early June, and young almost fledged on July 26 
(von Bunge and Toll, 1887). 
The nest is often placed in a dry situation. One of those described by Thayer and 
Bangs (1914) was under the drooping branch of a larch tree, another in a patch of 
creeping willow on a grassy hillside at the edge of a forest, while a third was well 
concealed in a pile of driftwood on an island in the delta of the Kolyma. Riley (1918) 
