Tas OCEANIC Taal. 
Querquedula gibberifrons, 8. Miller, 
0 = 
Vernacular Nameés.—| ? J 
0 
Swy2 S yet this species has been procured nowhere within 
¥, our limits except in the South Andaman Island. 
We failed to find it in the Northern Island and in 
the Cocos, and equally in the Nicobars. 
Outside our limits it has not yet been observed in 
the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Java, or Borneo ; but 
it occurs all over the Celebes group, in Timor and 
Flores; has been obtained at Port Essington at the extreme 
north of Australia, near Melbourne at the south, in New 
Caledonia and New Zealand. On the other hand I cannot 
find that it has been recorded from the Fiji Islands, the 
Sooloo Islands, New Guinea, or, in fact, any of the islands except 
Timor and Flores, lying between the Celebes and Australia, 
New Caledonia and New Zealand on the one hand, and the 
Andamans on the other. 
This distribution is quite inexplicable, and I can only suppose 
that, being a bird of retiring habits, it has hitherto escaped 
observation in many localities where it does occur. 
IN THE South Andaman it is a permanent resident, but what- 
ever it may have been in past times, is at present far from 
common Davison, in our paper on the Islands of the Bay of 
Bengal, remarked :—“It appears to frequent alike both salt and 
fresh water. During the day it either perches among the man- 
groves, or settles down in some shady spot on the bank of a 
stream ; when.wounded it does not attempt at first to dive, but 
swims for the nearest cover in which it hides itself, but when 
hard pressed it dives, but does not remain long under water, and 
appears to get soon exhausted. It feeds by night in the fresh- 
water ponds, and I was informed that it is to be seen during the 
rains in small flocks in the morning and evening in the paddy 
flats about Aberdeen. Sometimes, in going up the creeks, a pair 
will slip off the bank into the water, and keep swimming about 
20 yards ahead of the boat, only rising when hard pressed, but 
