THE SMEW. 295 
yards, though I followed them about for an hour. At last fired 
a 2hoz. B. B. wire cartridge out of my long No. 8 bore with 
seven drams of powder as the flock turned sideways, and killed 
one and crippled two others, all young birds, distance over one 
hundred yards,’ and so on;and only once have I noted. 
“ Strange to say, seven out of the twelve were old males, and 
as I worked up to the flock, I noticed that, for once, fully half 
the birds were black and white.” 
Of many migratory species, the mass of those that go 
farthest south are birds of the year,* and the great prevalence of 
these amongst the flocks of this species that are met with here 
may be explained by the fact that Upper India is the southern- 
most region which this species regularly visits. 
They are eminently gregarious, and are always seen in flocks of 
from seven to forty, and rarely in larger or smaller parties than 
from about a dozen to about twenty. Large rivers, like the Indus, 
(I have never seen them on the Jumna or Ganges) or large lakes 
covering 20 square miles and upwards of country, are what they 
chiefly affect ; and on these, even though shot at repeatedly, they 
will remain for months. I have, however, in unfrequented 
localities, occasionally seen them on ordinary good-sized jhils, 
covering, perhaps, barely a single square mile, but these they 
desert directly they are at all worried. 
As a rule, they are wary birds, and difficult to approach. 
They keep in deep water, far away from any cover, and you 
can only shoot them from a boat. They can swim faster than 
any ordinary up-country native boat can be propelled, and faster 
than one can paddle a punt when lying down. They keep a 
very sharp look-out, never diving ex masse, but some always 
watching, whilst the rest are under water, and, as a rule, the 
moment they see azy boat they swim away. In the grey of the 
morning, when a light stratum of mist lies along the surface of 
the water, you may creep up in a punt within shot, unnoticed ; but 
then one is very apt, peering through the mist in the twilight, 
to misjudge distances, and generally make a mess of the matter. 
Once knowing of a large party of Smews, I went after them 
early, and as I thought found and fired at them, to find directly 
I stood up, that I had killed half a boat-load of stilts, small 
paddy birds, and all kinds of useless waders, standing up 
to their bellies in the water on a hidden shoal, which, as they 
loomed through the mist, I could have sworn were the Smews. 
If you wait, as one does with most other fowl, till you can 
make certain what they are, they see you, and away they go 
swimming with little, but their heads and necks visible, faster 
than you can paddle. But at times, I presume when they have 
* Mr. Wallace (Geog. Dist. An., p. 26) seems to take an opposite view, and holds 
that the young birds do not go as far as the old; but Ican only say, that here in 
India, itis the young birds that straggle, in the case of many species, fm thest 
south, 
