126 THE RUDDY SHELLDRAKE OR BRAHMINY DUCK. 
places each separate bank will often be found to be the home 
of several pairs, each however, as a rule, keeping to its own 
particular portion of the bank and river frontage. In almost 
every river, however, large and small, they are to be met with 
dotted in pairs every half mile or so along its course. It is 
rare to see them in the plains, where the river banks and bed 
are rocky, still rarer to find them in small ponds or tanks ; but 
most large lakes are the resort of a few pairs throughout the 
winter, and in March and April, when gathering into flocks, 
preparatory to their departure, large flocks are far more com- 
monly seen on the more extensive broads and lakes than on 
any river. 
On such extensive pieces of water, I have often seen parties 
numbering many hundreds of birds, but I cannot recollect ever 
noticing more than thirty or forty Brahminies congregated in any 
one spot on a river. 
No object is more familiar in river scenery in India than a 
pair of these Ducks, standing or squatting, side by side, on the 
banks, or on some chur; no sounds are more perpetually heard 
as one floats lazily down with the stream, than their loud warning 
notes, repeated more earnestly as one draws nearer and nearer, 
and followed by the sharp patter of their wings as they rise on 
the approach of the boat. Very wary they are, and yet not at 
all afraid of men so long as these keep just out of gun-shot. 
At Allahabad, at the sacred junction of the Jumna and Ganges, 
I noticed during a great fair, which is held on the spit of sand, 
at whose apex the rivers meet, two pair of these Ducks, placid- 
ly performing their own ablutions just opposite where some 
200,000 people, densely packed, were bathing. The hum, the 
roar, I should say, of the mighty multitude sounded a mile off, 
like the surge of wind and waves in stormy weather on a _ rock- 
bound coast-—scores of boats conveying the richer pilgrims 
to a shallow of special sanctity, a hundred yards below the 
point, were ceaselessly plying backwards and forwards, crowded 
and crammed with human beings,—hundreds of gaudy flags 
were fluttering from the topmost points of gigantic bamboos 
planted near the water’s edge, yet, totally regardless of 
sounds and sights that might have startled the boldest bird, 
the old Brahminies dawdled about the opposing bank of the 
Ganges, distant barely 300 yards here from the clamorous 
struggling rainbow-coloured mass, as though these vagaries were 
no concern of theirs and signified no more than a convocation 
of ants. 
And it is not that any sanctity here guards them ;—you may 
see them constantly exposed for sale in the market,—nor that they 
are unmolested ; for Allahabad is one head quarters of 
E. I. Railway, and numbers of Europeans are constantly shooting 
about this very place in boats and favouring the Brahminies, as 
well as all other feathered things, with “sky” shots. 
