4 
Allen’s naturalist’s library. 
Caspian Seas, and the Indian Peninsula, being very abundant 
in the last-named locality. 
HaBlts. — The Red-crested Pochard is a fresh-water Duck, and 
frequents open sheets of water and broads, where there are 
fringes of reeds or overhanging trees, and being a capital 
diver, it loves places where the water is deep. Its favourite 
haunts, says Mr. A. O. Hume, who has given an excellent 
account of this species in his “Game Birds of India,” are deep 
broads, “where the feathery water-weed beds do not reach 
within several feet of the surface, not the comparatively shallow 
ones, where the same weeds lie in thick masses coiled along 
the surface.” Mr. Hume observes that habitually these Ducks 
keep in moderately-sized flocks of from ten to fifteen, but 
occasionally on very large pieces of water they are seen in 
thousands. Of their food he writes : — “ Although mainly vege- 
tarians, they indulge more in animal food than the Pochard. I 
have found small frogs, fish-spawn, shells (both land and 
water), insects, grubs, worms, and, on three or four occasions, 
tiny fish, mi.xed with the vegetable matter, sand, and pebbles 
that their stomachs contained. ... I examined one male 
which had entirely gorged itself on fishes about an inch in 
length. 
“Though constantly seen feeding by day, when in suitable 
situations, they also feed a good deal during the night, and 
those individuals, whose day-quarters happen for the time to 
be on waters that yield little food, leave these at dusk for more 
prolific haunts. They are strong but heavy fliers, and are slow 
in getting under w'.ay. ... I have sometimes found them 
out of the water, on the land a yard or two from the water’s 
edge, grazing and picking up small shells and insects, and they 
then walk better than the other Pochards. . . . Their 
call-note, not very often heard by day unless they are alarmed 
is quite of the Pochard character, not the quack of a duck, but 
a deep grating ‘ kurr.’ Occasionally the nuiles only, I think, 
emit a sharp sibilant note— a sort of whistle, quite different from’ 
that of the Wigeon, and yet somewhat reminding one of that. 
. . . They have a very characteristic wing-rustle, which 
though resembling that of the Pochard, is louder and harsher ; 
their wings .are short, and rapidly agitated, make a very distinct’ 
palpitating, rushing sound, by which even a single bird, pass^ 
