Sal Forests certainly rare; Major Maurice Twecdie, an ardent
sportsman, who was for five years stationed in the Kheri district
(now Lakhimpur) never so much as heard of it. But Mr. Battie
shows* that even in the West it is not very uncommon in the
forests, and in the central portions of the Province, though rare,
it also occurs. From time to time specimens are netted by
fowlers in the neighbourhood of Lucknow ; and Mr. Geo. Reid
has himself observed it near Mohunlalganj on the Rai Bareilly
road during the cold season. In the eastern portions of Oudh
it is still rare, but appears to be a regular, though scarce, cold
weather visitant to the jhfls of the Fyzabad (where Anderson
shot it) and Gondah districts. Again it is reported from
Gorakhpur and Basti and from the Nepal Terai, but in all
these it is scarce ; and as far as I can learn, in all but the
latter, a cold season visitant only.-)- It probably occurs in
Azimgarh and Ghazipur also, as it certainly does in Arrah,
where Mr. Doyle informs me that he shot one on the 22 nd of
November 1879, at the Bhojpur Jhil, near the Dumraon
Railway Station.
Further east in Bchar, Purneah, and Maldalrj it would seem
to be a permanent resident, and in special localities in Tirhoot
and Purneah to be comparatively common. Throughout the
rest of Lower and Eastern Bengal (except Tipperah and Chittagong,
from whence it has not been reported), it occurs, but is
everywhere said to be rare. So too both from Sylhet and the
entire valley of Assam up to Sadiya, (and in Munipur, where
Damant saw it), it is reported by one correspondent or another,
but always as a bird very rarely met with.
South of the Ganges, as already mentioned, it is occasionally
found at Arrah, and as Ball tells us, in the Rajmehal hills, near
Hazaribagh, near Sahibgunge§ on the Ganges, and in Manbhuin
of Chota Nagpur.
To the Deccan it is an extremely rare and accidental visitant.
Neither Davidson nor Wendcn ever met with it there, but Fairbank
saw it once near Ahmcdnagar, Colonel McMaster shot
» I shot a Pink-headed Duck this year, in May or June, up in the Sal Forests in
the north of the Kheri District. Another was shot some time afterwards in
the same jhil and you often see it in pairs in nullahs in the forests.
" 1 am told by the natives that this bird breeds in the Sat Forests, but I have
never found its nest. I know for a fact however that it stays down in the forests
all the year round."—J. Battie.
f Hut too much stress must not be laid upon this, as the question has not been
properly worked out, and it may, though rarely, breed in all these as also in Oudh,
where Irby says that he saw it three times [apparently the only occasions on which he
nut with i!) towards the close of the rainy season.
X Mr II Millelt kindly informed me, under date the 2nd of May. that Mr.
Herbert Keily had then recently " shot four or five specimens of this Duck in
the Maldah district ;" and that his brother had also previously shot one
there.
§ It is nearly opposite Sahibgungc, in the neighbourhood of Caragola (at the
south of the Purneah District) that the Pink-headed Duck, to judge from what
Mr F. A. Sliilbngfoid, Captain W. T. Heaviside, R E . , and others tell me, is
specially abundant.
it once about twenty miles from Secundcrabad after the rains
had set in, and Jerdon heard of it at Jalna.
But along the east coast it is less rare. It certainly occurs in
the Pulicat lake, as I have a specimen shot there, and Jerdon,
years previously, had obtained a specimen in the Madras market
caught there, and another from Nellore. Again north of Nellore
it appears to occur in suitable situations in Vizagapatam* and
Ganjam, north of which again in Cuttack, as in the rest of
Lower Bengal, it is an occasional straggler.
So far as I yet know, this species does not occur in cither
Pegu or Tenasserim, but Blyth gives it from Arakan.
Outside our limits I have only heard of its occurrence north of
Bhamo, in Independent Burma. It is never found anywhere
in the Himalayas, and is therefore not likely to cross them, but
it may extend vid Assam and Upper Burma into Southwestern
China (Yunan), though as yet this fact has not been
ascertained.
Summing up the meagre information at my command, I am
disposed to consider Behar and the rest of Bengal north of the
Ganges and west of the Brahmaputra as its head-quarters ; I
include the Nepal and Oudh Terai, the central and eastern
portions of Oudh, the Benares division of the North-Western
Provinces, the whole of the rest of Bengal, Assam, and
Munipur, and the east coast littoral as far south as Madras,
within its normal range, throughout which, however, it is,
except in certain special isolated localities, very rare. Its
occurrence elsewhere in any part of the empire I look upon as
quite exceptional and abnormal.
NEVER HAVING myself met with this Duck alive in a feral
state, what little I have to say of its habits will be based solely
on the reports of others.
Essentially a lake and swamp species, this bird is never seen
on any of our large rivers, or indeed, so far as I can learn, on
running water of any kind.
Tanks and pools, thickly set with reeds and aquatic
plants, swamps dense with beds of bulrushes and the like,
* Lieut.-Colonel W. J. Wilson kindly favours me with the following note:—"The
Pink-headed Duck used to frequent a piece of water near Condakirla, about 27
miles south of Vizagapatam, and in all probability is still to be found there, as well
as at similar places in the Northern Circa rs, although I do not now remember
having actually seen it except at Condakirla.
" The lakes in question are extensive and thickly covered by aquatic plants, so that
the birds have plenty of cover, and the only way of shooting them is from a long
narrow canoe punted through the weeds.
"These lakes seem to be peculiar to the Circars, and are called 'AWA' in
Vizagapatam, and ' Tuirtpera' in Ganjam. They are resorted to by wild fowl
of most kinds.
"To the best of my recollection the Pink-headed Duck I shot were killed in
November and December. I think I saw about 15 or 20 011 each occasion of my