THE TUFTED POCHARD. 281 
same order, and then back again, and so on five or six times 
getting amongst us sixty or seventy Pochards, besides other 
things, and yet when we left off at dusk, the flock was there 
all the same. Next morning not a Pochard was to be seen, 
whereas the Gadwall, Teal, and other ducks that had left 
before our third or fourth turn was completed were all back, 
famously on the guz zzve, but in their wonted numbers. 
Though noisy enough as they splash up in a crowd out of 
the water, and recognizable at any time by the sharp whistling 
of their wings as they pass over head, they are, in winter at 
any rate, singularly silent birds when let alone. When alarmed 
and flushed they occasionally emit the regular grating Pochard 
call, kurr, kurr, but not so loudly, I think, as some of the other 
species. 
On land I have never once seen them, but I should expect 
them to be clumsy walkers like most of the other Pochards. 
Their food is perhaps more animal than vegetable. They 
constantly devour small fish, and one finds every kind of water- 
insect, worm, grub, and shells, small lizards, frogs, spawn, 
&c., in their stomachs. Still like the rest they eat the leaves, 
stems and roots of water plants freely, and I have several notes 
of birds which had dined (or breakfasted) entirely off some 
white shining onion-like bulb. 
As a rule, they are not, I think, good ducks for the table. 
I have occasionally found them good enough; but in earlier 
times they proved so often rank, or froggy or fishy, that of late 
years I have never cooked them when anything else was pro- 
curable ; and where you get these you areso certain to get Teal, 
or Gadwall, or Snipe, or Godwit, or Ruffs and Reeves—all first- 
rate birds—that I have not perhaps given them a sufficient trial, 
and I have heard some sportsmen declare them excellent. 
CONSIDERING WHERE Blanford met with this species in May, 
and presumably about to breed, we might well expect to find 
them breeding in the lakes of Kashmir, in 34° North Latitude, 
and at an elevation of between 4,000 and 5,000 feet. But so 
far as is yet known, this species does not even occur in Kashmir, 
and for all particulars of its nidification we must refer to 
European writers. 
Dresser says:—“ The Tufted Duck breeds in the northern 
portions of Europe, the eggs being deposited early in June. The 
nest is placed on the ground, not far from or even close to the 
water. A nest, sent to me by Mr. Meves, taken at Muoniovaara, 
in Lapland, on the 20th June, consists of grass bents and a few 
leaves felted together with a mass of sooty brownish-black 
down, having dull greyish-white centres; and the eggs, eight 
in number, are uniform pale olive-green or greenish buff in 
colour, smooth and polished in texture of shell, and in size 
MI 
