234 THE CRESTED OR BRONZE-CAPPED TEAL. 
females.—Wings, 9°88 to 10°06 ; tails, 3:22 to 3°57; bills at 
front, 1°75 to 1°84 ; tarsi, 1°46 to 4°62. 
Some of these dimensions seem abnormally large. Dresser 
gives— 
Male—Length, 19:0; wing, 100; tail, 30; culmen, 1°83; 
tarsus, 1°35. 
Female—tLength, 16:0(!); wing, 9:0; tail, 3:4; tarsus, 12. 
Of the soft parts Middendorff says that the female, with a 
greenish black bill and brown iris, has the same bluish clay- 
coloured feet, with darker webs, as the male. 
THE PLATE is good, and shows the conspicuous white patch on 
the forehead, which, though ignored in almost every plate I 
have seen, is conspicuous in every one of the four Indian-killed 
males that I possess. The feet are not rightly coloured. 
In the case of the female the speculum is unfortunately hid. 
The female has perhaps often been passed over and mistaken 
for a female Gadwall. Indeed the two birds are so extremely 
like each other, and the bills are so very nearly the same size 
and shape, that this is not to be wondered at. However in the 
female falcata, the whole upper mandible is uniformly dark 
coloured, whereas in the female Gadwall it is only dark along 
the culmen. Again the tarsi and toes of the female Gadwall vary 
from dirty yellow to orange, those of the present species from ~ 
drab, with an olive tinge to bluish clay colour. 
But it is in the speculum of the wing that the difference 
between the two species is most readily discernible. 
In the female Gadwall the entire visible portions of the later 
secondaries are pure white, the terminal portions of their larger 
coverts, black. 
In female falcata, the visible portions of all the later seconda- 
ries are black, with more or less of metallic green reflections, 
narrowly tipped with white, and the terminal portions of thezr 
greater coverts are white. 
Moreover, in the female Gadwall, the upper abdomen is usu- 
ally pure white, and almost unmarked, whereas in the Bronze- 
cap, it is fulvous or pale rufescent fawn, or fawny white, 
thickly set with small, more or less obsolete, brown spots. 
As a rule our Indian-killed specimens entirely want the 
sickle-shaped tertiaries so conspicuous in our plate. Only one 
of our specimens, obtained in Lucknow, towards the close of 
March, exhibits these. 
In some specimens there is more, and in others less, green at 
the sides of the head than is shown in the plate. Young birds 
show nearly the whole back brown like the female, and this 
after the head has become nearly full plumaged. Most males 
are greyer everywhere, and rather less fulvous than the Lucknow 
specimen figured, 
