WANDERING TREE DUCK 145 



Courtship and Nesting. There is no definite period of the year for the breeding 

 cycle, which depends largely on the onset of the rains. In Australia they usually 

 nest from December to March (Ramsay, 1876), but nests and eggs have been taken 

 as early as November and as late as May (North, 1913). In Celebes a nestling was 

 taken on July 29 and in the Philippines the species was found nesting in February, 

 and a hard-shelled egg was taken from a bird in January (R. C. McGregor, 1909). 

 In the British Museum there is an egg collected in the Philippines in May (E. W. 

 Oates, 1902), and von Rosenberg took a young one in down in Celebes in July 

 (Meyer and Wiglesworth, 1898). 



There is no information about the display of the sexes, beyond what has already 

 been given as characterizing the group as a whole. The nests themselves are very 

 hard to find, and undoubtedly are usually well hidden in open grass country, or in 

 thick reeds. Even in Australia, where the bird is so common, both Campbell (1901) 

 and North (1913) base their accounts on the same clutch of eggs, as Mathews (1914- 

 15) has aptly remarked. Keartland (North, 1913) found them breeding among the 

 spinifex or coarse grass in northern Australia. If one is to judge from the meager 

 information at hand, it appears that the nest is made in the grass, without any lining 

 of feathers or down. The birds may at times breed in the holes of trees or on branches, 

 in the tropics. Ramsay (1879) reports it following this practice in New Guinea. 

 The eggs number twelve or thirteen (Kilgour, Emu, vol. 4, p. 38, 1904) and Barnard 

 (North, 1913) found a clutch of fifteen. So few nests have been recorded that it is 

 impossible to state with any degree of certainty the number of the average clutch. 

 The eggs are of a creamy -white color and vary in size from 47.4 to 52 mm. by 35.5 

 to 38 mm. (E. W. Oates, 1902). As to the incubation period nothing is known, but it 

 is undoubtedly longer than that of true ducks. (See information on other species.) 



The male may take part in incubation as it sometimes does in the case of Dendro- 

 cygna viduata and Dendrocygna discolor. 



Status. In Australia this species, like all water-fowl except the Black Duck, has 

 suffered much from the advancing settlements. North (1913) speaks of having 

 bought specimens in the Sydney markets in 1888, but mournfully remarks that he 

 has seen none of these ducks in the poulterers' shops for a number of years past. 

 In the Murray River district, where it was very plentiful thirty years ago, an ob- 

 server has noted only one flock in the eight or nine years preceding 1909 (Hall, 

 Emu, vol. 9, p. 78, 1909). But the species is still abundant in the more tropical and 

 inaccessible portions of its range, although Ramsay (1879) found it less plentiful 

 than Dendrocygna guttulata, even in New Guinea. 



Governor Cameron Forbes tells me that he met with it in almost incredible num- 

 bers in the interior lakes of the Philippines, where huge bags were easily made 

 with only a few discharges of his gun. These islands are perhaps the chief center of 

 abundance. 



