ANDAMAN TEAL 
291 
DISTRIBUTION 
This Teal is confined to the Andaman group and is apparently far more common on South Andaman 
than anywhere else. So far as I know it has never been taken on Little Andaman, but in the north 
it has been found on Landfall Island and on Great Cocos, and once near Bassein on the Burmese 
coast (Hume and Marshall, 1879; Baker, 1908; N. F. Wilson, 1904; etc.). Fleming (1911) has 
recorded it from North Reef Island. 
GENERAL HABITS 
Haunts. This species is closely related to the Gray Teal of Australia {Anas gibheri- 
frons) and, it seems to me, is quite wrongly placed by Sharpe in a separate genus 
with the Spot-bill {Anas poecilorhyncha) . It is little known to ornithologists. All we 
have learned of its habits we owe to the writings of Hume and Marshall (1879), 
Osmaston (1906) and Butler (in Baker, 1908). It is found wherever fresh-water 
lagoons exist, but flocks were also seen resorting at low tide to two rocky islets in 
the neighborhood of Port Blair at the head of the harbor (Butler). After the mon- 
soon began (early June) these flocks of Teal broke up into small parties of five or 
six and retired to the creeks and dyke-intersected marshes a little inland. A month 
or so later they began to breed. 
Waeiness. Hume and Marshall (1879) did not consider them wild or wary when 
in pairs. Sometimes, in going up the creeks a pair would slip off the bank into the 
water and keep swimming about twenty yards ahead of the boat, only rising when 
hard pressed. He says, “They do not leave a place at the first shot, and Davison has 
got as many as eight by successive shots out of the same flock, the birds flying about 
and settling again at short distances. But they are eminently birds of a retiring 
habit, and very soon abandon, as a day haunt, any place which civilized or semi- 
civilized men begin to frequent.” 
Butler also found them extremely tame when in pairs in the small channels 
among the marshes. He was often able to creep close to them and one pair which he 
surprised at very close quarters merely fluttered like Water-hens along the surface, 
then pitched down and began swimming away. Birds that had been shot at, how- 
ever, behaved very differently, and the flocks around Aberdeen were very wild, for 
they had been much hunted by the English residents. 
Daily Movements. During the day these birds spend most of their time sleep- 
ing or perching in some inaccessible mangrove swamp, but in the evening they flock 
together and resort to fresh-water ponds or paddy-fields to feed (Hume and Marshall, 
1879). 
Gait, Swimming, Diving, Perching. According to Hume and Marshall, and 
Finn these birds are active both on land and on water. They do not attempt to dive 
