168 THE GREY OR SPOT-BILL DUCK. 
Butler says, “I always select this species in a drive to fire at in 
preference to most of the others.” 
These ducks are occasionally, but not very often, caught by 
hand and in nets like other species; and in the south of the 
Peninsula, Mr. Albert Theobald says, that the shzkaris make 
up large bundles of rushes, which they float on the water, and 
then resting their guns on these, paddle up softly, keeping the 
bundle between themselves and the ducks, and so get easy and 
close shots at these ducks, which, as already noticed, are not 
amongst the more wary and suspicious kinds, 
‘THE GREY DvuCcK breeds, in suitable situations, pretty well 
throughout the vast tract above indicated in defining its range ; 
and in the drier portions of this it is only during the breeding 
season that it is at all common. 
This breeding season varies a great deal with locality; in 
the North-West Provinces, Oudh and the eastern portions 
of Rajputana and the Punjab, it only breeds, so far as I 
yet know, once a year, laying during the latter half of July, 
August and the first-half of September. In Sindh it lays in 
April and May, and again in September and October. In 
Gujarat it certainly lays in October, and in Mysore in Novem- 
ber and December, though whether in these two last-named 
provinces also, it has a second spring brood, I have not yet 
ascertained. 
The nest appears to be generally placed upon the ground, 
and rarely in the fork of some flat branch just above the 
surface of the ground or water, in low dense cover of grass, 
rush and the like, to be of the usual duck type and to con- 
tain from 6 to 12 eggs. 
I have myself only found two nests. The first, which I found 
on the 1st August at Rahun, was placed on a drooping branch 
of a tree, which hung down from the canal bank into a thick 
clump of rushes growing in a jhil that near the bridge fringes 
the canal. Thenest was about nine inches above the surface 
of the water, was entirely concealed in the high rushes, and was 
firmly based on a horizontal trifurcation of the bough. It was 
composed of dry rush, and had a good deep hollow in which 
down, feathers, and fine grass were intermingled. The nest 
was at least a foot in diameter, perhaps more, and I suppose 
two inches thick in the centre and four inches at the sides. It 
contained three fresh eggs. 
The second nest I found on the 29th August in a large 
jhil, half-swamp, half-lake, in front of Moonj, (also in the 
Etawah District) on the ground, in a low, thick bed of sedge 
on an island about two yards square, to reach which a man 
had to swim. I did not see the nest (though I saw the bird 
flushed and the eggs taken) ; but it was described to me much 
