THE NUKHTA OR COMB DUCK. 97 
Water Fowl are about ; but just at the commencement of the 
rains, when they are all over the country, and before they 
begin to lay, they afford, in some parts of the North-Western 
Provinces, in combination with the Whistling and Cotton Teal, 
a few days’ very pretty shooting. 
It is only during the first burst of the monsoon, and before 
they commence to lay, that it is right to shoot any of these 
three species. The way in which some men go on shooting 
them throughout the rains, whilst they have nests and helpless 
young about, is much to be regretted. 
THE NUKHTA lays in the North-West Provinces, where 
alone I have taken its nest, in July, August, and occasionally 
the first-half of September. I have received no detailed accounts 
of its nidification elsewhere, but Major Mc.Inroy tells me 
that it breeds to his knowledge, in the Bagriodkere Tank in 
the Chittaldoog district, and in some other disricts in Mysore, 
and Mr. J. Davidson writes:—“In the Panch Mahals, it was 
very fairly common, a pair inhabiting nearly every one of 
the small tanks which are scattered about everywhere. They 
breed in the latter part of the rains; the only nest I took 
contained thirteen eggs, and was in the hollow top of a dead 
mango tree, but I saw the young in very many places.” Ramsay 
says that it breeds in Tonghoo in July and August. In Ceylon 
it is said to breed from January to March. 
According to my experience, it generally nests in some 
mango grove bordering a jhil or broad, placing its nest, which 
is composed of sticks, a few dead leaves, grass, and feathers, 
at no great height from the ground, either in some large hole 
in the trunk, or in the depression between three or four great 
arms, where the main stem, (as it so often does in mango 
trees,) divides at a height of from six to ten feet from the 
ground. 
I have found numerous nests thus situated. Once, and once 
only, I found a nest in a regular swamp at one end of a jhil 
in amongst a thick growth of sedge and rush, and in this 
case no sticks had been used, but the whole nest, which was 
a foot in diameter, and five or six inches in depth, was composed 
of reeds and rushes, lined with a little Cry grass and a few 
feathers; this nest had a good deep cavity, I dare say fully 
four inches in depth, while those found in trees had central 
depressions barely half this depth. Twelve is the largest 
number of eggs that I have found, and I believe seven or 
eight to be the usual complement, but in regard to this and 
other points I may quote the following interesting remarks 
by the late Mr. A. Anderson. He says :— 
“This curious and handsomely-colored Duck deposits its 
eggs in holes of old deciduous trees, and never, I should say, 
in grass by the sides of tanks, &c., as stated by Jerdon. The 
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