THE GARGANEY OR BLUE-WINGED TEAL. 221 
But the parent birds were not obtained, and there is no cer- 
tainty that these eggs do belong to the Garganey, though they 
are like European examples, and though the bird has been 
killed on this coast late in May. 
These eggs are moderately broad obtuse-ended ovals, 
intermediate in size between those of D. javanica and LV. coro- 
mandelicus. ‘The shell is smooth and satiny, and has a percep- 
tible gloss; the colour isan uniform ivory. They vary from 
1°8 to Ig in length, and from 1°35 to 1°43 in breadth. 
But besides all this, though never yet recorded from Kashmir, 
elsewhere in the Himalayas, the Garganey is continually turn- 
ing up in out-of-the-way places from elevations of four 
thousand feet and upwards during the summer. I have 
repeatedly thus met with them, to the best of my belief, during 
all the summer months, though, as I never noted the dates, I 
cannot be quite certain of this now. Other men have also told 
me of thus seeing them,* and it seems very possible that some 
few pairs may linger to breed in secluded situations in the Hima- 
layas. Elsewhere they do not appear to breed much south of 
Sicily and Central Greece, say, approximately .the 38th degree 
North Latitude ; but that is in low country, and they may well 
breed 6 or 8 degrees south of this in our elevated regions. But 
I confess that I should not expect them to prove to breed 
normally elsewhere in India ; and, if a single nest should ever be 
found anywhere in the plains, I should, in default of evidence 
to the contrary, consider it as quite an abnormal and exceptional 
occurrence, 
Of their nidification in Europe little need be said, as it 
precisely resembles that of the Common Teal. Mr. Hoy wrote 
“from his experience on the continent” (people were vague in 
those days) that “the Garganey commences laying its eggs 
about the middle of April. The nest, which is composed of 
rushes and dried grass, mixed with the down of the bird, is 
placed upon the ground in low boggy situations, among the 
coarse herbage and rushes, in marshes, and on the borders of 
lakes and rivers.” 
Mr. Benzon, of Copenhagen, tells us that “this Teal breeds 
here and there in Denmark, in morasses, and inland sheets of 
water, and is particularly abundant in Jutland, whence I have 
both the young in down and eggs on which the females have been 
captured. The number of eggs varies from six to thirteen. 
The earliest nest contained eleven eggs, and was taken on the 
* Captain Baldwin also says :—“ I met with this bird in the Himalayas several 
times, first at Nynee Tal, then at Bheem Tal, another lake near the former, where I 
shot three birds ; again on the Pindur river ; and, lastly, I shot three more in small 
patches of water high up in the middle ranges, too close to a tea garden at Gwal- 
dung, and a third at Goomur Tal, on the opposite side of the Pindur river. I do not 
think these stray birds remained to breed in the out-of-the-way spots I have mentioned, 
though it is possible, but I am inclined to think that they were merely resting 
themselves,” 
