THE WHITE-EYED POCHARD. 267 
They are with us quite omnivorous ; no doubt their food 
chiefly consists of vegetable matter—leaves, stems, roots and 
seeds of grass, rush, sedge and all kinds of aquatic herbage ; 
but besides this I have noted at different times, amongst the 
contents of their stomachs, delicate fresh-water shells and 
shrimps, insects (including several species of Neuroptera and 
Lepidoptera!) and their larva, worms, grubs and small fishes. 
I have often, when lying up hid in the reeds, waiting for more 
valuable fowl to come over, watched little parties of them 
feeding in some tiny, weedy, reed-hedged opening. Part of 
the time they swim about nibbling at the herbage or picking 
shells or insects off the lotus leaves; but they are continually 
disappearing below the surface, often re-appearing with a whole 
bunch of feathery, slimy weed, which all present join in gobbling 
up. Sometimes they remain a very long time out of sight, 
I should guess nearly two minutes (it seems an age) ; but 
generally they do not, when thus feeding, keep under more than 
say from forty to fifty seconds. 
I fancy that they feed preferentially by day ; first, because 
when in their favourite haunts I have invariably found them, 
when I have had opportunities of watching them unperceived, 
busy feeding at all hours, and never asleep as night-feeding 
ducks so constantly are between 11 A.M. and 3 P.M. ; and, secondly, 
because I have so rarely killed them when flight shooting. 
When settled on some comfortable, rush-embosomed, weed- 
interwoven broad, I am pretty certain that they do not change 
their quarters at night-fall, as when encamped near any of their 
chosen day-haunts I have heard their harsh familiar call at 
intervals throughout the midnight hours ; but of course in the 
less common case, when they affect bare-shored lakes or rivers 
by day, and some few do do this, they must needs go elsewhere 
to feed during the night, and in such situations I have once 
or twice seen them at midday snoozing at the water’s edge. 
Their quack or note is peculiar, though something like that 
@meener: hochard: a Marsh /kirr,) kere, kites with “which 
one soon becomes acquainted as they invariably utter it, 
“ staccato,’ as they bustle up from the rushes, often within 
a few yards of the boat. 
What a difference a change of scene and fortunes makes in 
birds as well as men. The White-eye is not the only class of 
old Indians that improves vastly by a sojourn in Europe! 
Flere, this duck is very inferior eating, very fat no doubt 
at times, but almost always tainted by a certain marshy twang, 
but in Spain Colonel Irby tells us that “its flesh is not only 
like that of the Red-headed and Red-crested Pochards excellent 
eating, but far surpasses either in that respect.” 
Here, my advice to persons thinking of eating them, when any 
other wholesome food is available, must be Punch’s, to those 
contemplating matrimony, *“‘ DON’T!” 
