354 
ANAS ERYTHRORHYNCHA 
with the edges of the feathers lighter. Scapulars nearly black, with buff-colored margins. Back, 
rump, upper tail-coverts and tail dark brown, with some gray on feather margins. Under parts 
w'hitish, each feather with a subterminal dark-brown spot. Spots larger on the flanks. Wing-coverts 
very dark brown except the last row which have a wide buffy band at their tips. The speculum 
proper is very narrow, velvety black to iridescent green in color, and all the rest of the secondaries 
are buffy white, forming a conspicuous w’ing-patch. Primaries dark browm. Tertials dark brown 
with narrow buff margins. Under wing-coverts brown and gray; axillars barred with dark brown. 
Iris brown. Bill dusky browm on top of culmen but brilliant pink on the sides and base of culmen. 
Legs and feet dark ash color (Andersson, 1872; T. Ayres, 1880). 
Wing 207-220 mm.; culmen 40-44; tarsus 36-38. 
Adult Female: Similar to the male. 
Young in First Plum.^ge: Resemble the adults, but all the feather markings, especially the light 
edgings of the wing-coverts, are not so well defined. The red of the bill is also duller than in the adult 
birds (Blaauw, 1919). 
Young in Down: According to Salvadori it is similar to the same stages of Anas bahamensis but a 
shade darker on the under parts. According to Blaauw the young looks like that of the South 
American Ringed Teal, but the light parts, instead of being pearly white are pale lemon-yellow, 
whilst the dark parts of the upper side are also slightly tinted with yellow. Also there is a dark spot 
between the yellow of the breast and that of the throat, and the dark line that runs from the base of 
the bill through the eye does not quite reach the brown of the neck as is the case with the Ringed 
Teal (Blaauw, 1919). The specimens which I saw in the Leyden Museum seemed hardly to be dis- 
tinguished from the downy Mallard except that the trans-ocular dark streak was more sharply de- 
fined and actually encircled the orbit. The superciliary light stripe was likewise very sharply defined 
from the almost black occiput, and the dark aural patches were present. 
DISTRIBUTION 
Abyssinia 
This is one of the commonest African ducks and its range is practically the same as that of the 
Hottentot Teal and other surface-feeding ducks of that continent. In the east it is found as far 
north as southern Abyssinia, whence it has been recorded from Taddaccia and Lake 
Cialalaka (Salvadori, 1884), Lake Tana, January to May (von Heuglin, 1873), Lake 
Harrar-Meyer, common in March (von Erlanger, 1905; Ogilvie-Grant, 1900) and Lake Ailan 
(Ogilvie-Grant and Reid, 1901). It has also been met with in British Somaliland (Shelley, 1885). 
In Uganda specimens have been taken in southwestern Ankole (Ogilvie-Grant, 1905a) and on both 
sides of Lake Albert Edward (Sassi, 1912; Lonnberg, 1917). It is a fairly common species in British 
. East Africa, where it was found at Machakos (Hinde, 1898), but particularly on Lake 
Naivasha (Sharpe, 1902; W. Stone, 1905; G. H. Gurney, 1909; Bannerman, 1910). 
The British Museum has a specimen collected at Lamu. The species is found throughout the Masai 
East Africa (G. A. Fischer, 1884; Neumann, 1898) and apparently in the whole of what was 
formerly German East Africa. It is a common bird throughout the whole Kilimandjaro 
region (Sjostedt, 1910; Reichenow, 1905), and has been recorded also from Mambojo, Zanzibar and 
Pangani (Kirk, fide Reichenow, 1900), from Umbugwe, Lake Manjara, Kwa Kitoto and Kibaja 
(Neumann, 1898), from lunga and Massasi {fide Reichenow, 1900) and from Karema as well as 
various other localities on the east coast of Lake Tanganyika (Matschie, 1887; Bohm, 1885; Dubois, 
1886a; Kothe, 1911). 
Neave (1910) found the Red-bill generally distributed in the region of the upper Lufira, Katanga 
