RING-NECKED TEAL 
305 
The Ring-necked Teal seems never to have reached Europe alive until about 1908, 
when the Berlin Gardens received a number of males, but no females. About the 
same time Mr. Blaauw acquired at least one specimen. Seth-Smith (1912) says 
about half a dozen males were imported into Germany at that time, and there must 
have been at least one female, for soon after, a few pairs, bred in Germany, were 
offered for sale. From this source the London Gardens obtained a pair in 1911, the 
first they had ever possessed. So far as I know, this pair never bred. But the stock 
which Mr. Blaauw obtained proved easy to breed, and he (1919) was soon able 
to give detailed descriptions of the various immature plumages. In England, Earl 
Grey has kept them. He writes me that they thrived but did not breed. Mr. Hugh 
Wormald, however, has bred them successfully, but I have no details concerning 
his experiences with them. I saw some at his place in May, 1922, but they had not 
commenced to breed. 
A few of these Teal reached America in 1914-15. They were probably captive- 
bred, and were offered for sale by Louis Ruhe in New York. The New York Zoologi- 
cal Society received a pair on August 12, 1914, and both of these birds were still 
living in July, 1921. The male, which I examined carefully in March, 1921, had 
become very much darker, almost melanistic, on the mantle, and to a lesser extent 
on the cheeks. Mr. Crandall informs me that another male which the Gardens kept 
for some years, had, by the time it died, become even darker than the one I exam- 
ined. The assumption of a melanistic plumage in captivity is rather common in 
many kinds of birds, but I never before knew of its occurrence in ducks. Mr. Blaauw 
thinks that the assumption of a dark plumage in his stock is a temporary affair 
coming and going with different moults. 
A pair which I acquired in the spring of 1915 arrived in very bad condition. The 
male never really recovered its health, and died in the course of a few months; the 
female lived a good deal longer, but I could never make any satisfactory observations 
on either of them. They were extremely independent, and never seemed to mingle 
with the other small water-fowl among which they were kept. 
No one has yet recorded much about breeding them. Mr. Blaauw (1919) says that 
his bird or birds deposited eggs in a box overhanging the water. The number of eggs 
was generally seven, and the incubation, presumably under a hen, about twenty- 
three days. One peculiar thing about Mr. Wormald’s birds was the very late nesting, 
which is seen regularly year after year. The earliest eggs ever deposited at his place 
were on June 1, the latest of all the ducks. To my knowledge the species has never 
been bred in the United States. 
Wild-caught birds have always been very hard to get and hand-reared stock is 
scarce and expensive, fetching around £12 the pair at the present time. 
Htbrids. In the Berlin Gardens this Teal has been crossed with the Brazilian 
Teal, but the offspring proved sterile (Poll, 1911), 
