Querquedula angustirostris, Meuetries.
Vernacular Names.—[? ]
T is curious that this conspicuously distinct species, and
one that visits our Empire in such comparatively
large numbers, should have remained unnoticed until
my visit to Sindh. Since its first discovery there,
however, it has been repeatedly met with—not only
there, but in several distant portions of the Empire.
Its normal range with us (it is presumably only
a cold weather visitant; appears to be the whole of Sindh,
(from every collcctorate in which it has been recorded, and
where it is extremely common), and Northern Gujerat,
the southern half of the Dera Ghazi Khan District, and of
Bhawalpur, in all three of which it is a regular but less abundant
visitant. No doubt it will be met with in Cutch and
Northern Kathiawar, but it has not been thence recorded as yet.
But outside these limits it occurs much further east as a
straggler. I have had specimens from Western Oodeypore, and
from near Delhi. The late Mr. A. Anderson procured it in the
N.-W. Provinces, at Fattehgarh, and in Oudhnear Ffurdui; and
I myself obtained two freshly-killed specimens in the Calcutta
market, the one in December and the other in February, which
had been captured about 22 miles south-west, and some 18 miles
west, respectively, of the metropolis.
Outside our limits, it occurs in suitable localities (though
these are few and far between) in Beluchistan and Southern
Afghanistan. From Persia Proper it has not yet been recorded,
but it was originally described from Lenkoran, (on the south-west
coast of the Caspian in about 390 North Latitude), and there can
be no doubt that it will be found in many places in Persia, and
probably in Mesopotamia. In Palestine it is very abundant, and
breeds. In North-cast Africa it seems to be very rare. Tristram
has a specimen from Alexandria, and Hcuglin himself procured
a specimen in the Beni Hasan region ; but no other record of its
occurrence in Egypt or Nubia is known to me. Hcuglin gives
it from Tripoli; it is very common in Tunis (in winter) as it is
in Algiers and Morocco (in summer), in both of which, as also