192 THE PIN-TAIL. 
It isnot common, therefore, to make a good bag* of Pin-tail 
with a small gun. I cannot remember ever bagging a dozen 
with a shoulder gun inaday. On the other hand, though wary, 
they can be worked up toinapunt ; they goin large flocks, and 
sit close, so that no species yields heavier bags with a swivel. 
No duck, again, is more readily caught by both fall and stand- 
ing nets. They area little troublesome to work up to the latter, 
being shy and suspicious birds, but they rise less easily, and 
at a lower angle than Mallard or Gadwall, and can be safely 
flushed at a greater distance from the net, and there is no 
duck of which you can make as heavy a haul with the standing 
net as of Pin-tail. 
They swim moderately well; they look, perhaps, owing to 
their long arching necks and raised tails, better than any other 
species when afloat ; but when winged they do not swim rapidly, 
and are such poor divers that they are very soon tired out 
and captured. 
Feeding, as they commonly do, almost exclusively by night, it 
is rare to see them doing more than nibbling the water weeds 
around them ; butin very unfrequented waters I have, even during 
the day time, but especially about sunset, repeatedly seen large 
flocks of them feeding energetically in the shallows, their long 
tails bent downwards almost parallel to the water, and the whole 
anterior halves of their bodies invisible, beneath this. I especially 
noticed that, while every individual of a party of Mallard or 
Gadwall may be thus seen, head under at the same time, 
a certain number of Pin-tail always remain on the guz vzve, whilst 
the rest are ducking under. Occasionally I have seen a por- 
tion of a flock, both early in the morning and towards evening, 
feeding on the land, on grassy sward close by the margin of some 
jhil, the rest of the flock feeding close at hand in the water. 
They walk very freely, but not so lightly as the Gadwall, and 
with their necks outstretched in front of them, and their 
tails raised, are not, in my opinion, thus seen by any means to 
the best advantage. 
Their food is very varied, although, like most of our wild fowl], 
wild rice, so long as it lasts, is their main staple. But besides 
this, worms, small shells, both land and water, grass and aquatic 
plants, bulbous roots and corms, and insects of all kinds, are found 
in their stomachs. I think that with us they must particularly 
affect shells, because in no less than three cases (out of twenty- 
* Since this was written, I have met with the following remarks by Captain 
Baldwin. which I quote as being directly opposed to my own experience :— 
‘*A friend and I killed nineteen couple of duck one day off the Lowqua Lake, 
opposite Tezpoor on the Brahmaputra, and more than half the birds were Pin-tails. 
**Tt is, generally speaking, an easy bird to approach, even when feeding on open 
pools of water.” 
All I can say is, that in Upper India I have found it (except when basking, and 
as it thinks hidden, in a clump of water weeds) the wariest of birds, not only to 
approach in the ordinary way, but with a regular punt, secundem artem. 
