390 THE GAME BIRDS AND WILD FOWL 



Hume to be very inferior ; but Irby, on the other hand, informs us that it is 

 excellent. Either this is purely a matter of taste, or due to a difference in 

 the food of the bird. 



Nidif ication. — The White-eyed Pochard is a late breeder in the extreme 

 eastern and southern portions of its range, not laying before June ; but in Spain 

 and Central Europe it is at least a month or five weeks earlier. The nest is 

 usually made among the reeds and rushes at the margin of the pool, either 

 on land, or more or less floating on masses of rotten fallen vegetation or drifting 

 weed. Occasionally, however, it is built on a tuft of sedge or rush ; and it has 

 been found carefully concealed in a bush several feet from the ground. It is 

 made of dry rushes, sedge, and other vegetable refuse, the finer materials being 

 used for the interior, which is again lined with down and a few feathers from 

 the body of the female. The eggs are from eight to fourteen in number, ten 

 being an average clutch, and are pale creamy-brown, a delicate cafe au lait hue, 

 faintly tinged with green. They are smooth and fine in texture, but show little 

 gloss, and measure on an average 2'1 inches in length by 1'49 inch in breadth. 

 The down tufts are rather small and very dark brown ; but the late Lord Lilford, I 

 notice, describes the down as " brownish-white " in a nest from which the female 

 was shot in Southern Spain. Incubation, performed by the female, is said by 

 Favier to last thirty days ; Naumann affirms twenty-two to twenty-three days. 

 It is not known that more than one brood is reared in the year. 



Diagnostic cliaracters.— (Nuptial Plumage), Nyroca, with the head, 

 neck, and upper breast rich chestnut, with a white spot on the chin, with a 

 white alar speculum, and with the bill dark lead-blue or bluish-black (adult 

 male) ; with a white alar speculum, with the head and neck pale chestnut, 

 and with the under tail coverts and axillaries white (adult female). Length, 

 16 inches. 



