ORNAMENTAL WATERFOWL. 207 
‘« The female is like the male, but has a rust-coloured patch on each 
side of the face at the root of the beak; the green of the head is less bright 
and is mixed slightly with rusty about the throat ; the breast is lighter, nor 
is its colour so sharply defined from the white belly as in the male, and there 
is less white on the flanks. The male in undress assumes the rusty facial 
patch, and gets some white mottling on the breast, and the white appears to 
fade at this time off the flanks of both sexes. The eyes of the female are 
brown, rarely grey or whitish. 
“The young birds are of a dirty light brown, with wings and tail 
much as in the parents. The crown is blackish, and there is a rusty patch 
on the face as in the old female. The colour of the eyes is already quite 
different in the sexes even in this plumage, so it must develop early.” 
WHITE-EYED DUCK; FERRUGINOUS DUCK. 
(Nyroca africana. Fuligula nyroca. Nyroca ferruginea. 
Nyroca leucopthalma). 
This small Pochard is an occasional visitor to England 
during the winter and early spring, breeding in the more 
northern latitudes during the summer. Captain Shelley states 
that he has seen the White-eyed Pochard in flocks of many 
thousands on the lakes of Lower Egypt, where the birds rose 
with a running flight when disturbed, striking the water very 
rapidly with their feet, and making a noise in so doing which 
could be heard at a distance of two miles. A correspondent 
writing to Mr. Dresser from Poland describes the White-eyed 
Duck as frequenting ponds, lakes and sluggish rivers, where the 
banks are overgrown with herbage and bushes; the female 
placing her nest upon a tussock at the very edge of deep water, 
into which she slips noiselessly when alarmed, diving to a con- 
siderable depth. The flesh is reckoned good, and is much 
sought after in the autumn, when the birds are fat. This Duck 
feeds chiefly upon vegetable substances, which, like other 
Pochards, it seizes at some distance below the water. Specimens 
