THE WHITE-WINGED WOOD-DUCK. 149 
In Siam I should expect it to occur. 
“THEY ROOST,” says Colonel Graham, “on trees, and frequent 
solitary pools in deep tree jungle. They are always in pairs, 
and may be heard calling to each other at great distances. 
They are rare in Darrang, for the forest isnot dense enough 
and extensive enough there as a rule, but in the vast pathless 
tree jungles of Lakhimpur they are common.” 
Says Godwin-Austen: “It appears to prefer sluggish streams 
flowing through forest, like the Dunsiri at Dinapur, and I once 
flushed it in such a haunt in the interior of the Garo Hills.” 
In the northern portions of the Maiay Peninsula, where Darling, 
Davison, and others of my collectors have come across it, it has 
been entirely confined to still pools in the heart of dense forest, 
and has always proved too shy and wary to permit of a speci- 
men being secured. It seems to perch more habitually on trees 
at all seasons than almost any other Indian species. 
I have already quoted Jerdon’s remarks. Strange that Blyth 
too says that this species “inhabits the valleys of the great 
rivers from the Megna at least to Tenasserim.” Had he any 
grounds for this assertion? Is it possible that for a short por- 
tion of the year this species comes down in flocks to the great 
rivers, and at other times lives in pairs far away in the depths 
of the primeval forests? Such a thing would be possible, but I 
doubt its being a fact. During the past ten years the valleys of 
the Megna, the Irrawaddy, the Sitang, the Salween, the Attaran, 
the Gyne, the Thoungyeen, the Houngthraw, the Tavoy, the 
Tenasserim and the Pakchan, have been searched (in the case 
of most of them time after time) by my correspondents and 
collectors, without any single one of them having ever so much 
as seen a single bird of this species. 
Personally, I believe this great river valley idea to be a pure 
delusion. 
OF THE nidification of this species nothing is known, except 
that it certainly breeds within our limits. Mr. James, of the 
Samaguting Police, informed Major Godwin- Austen that it bred 
on the Dunsiri, and that he had shot the young birds. 
THE ONLY specimen that I possess of this species, a female, 
measures in the skin :— 
Benet .27:0., wins, 02°7> tail, 67S; tarsus, 2:2; bill from 
gape, 2°58. 
The legs and feet, Colonel Graham wrote to me, were dirty 
yellowish green, and the bill appears to have been yellow, 
brownish at tip and base. Certainly neither bill, legs nor feet 
