rat mimm VEAL
Querquedula gibberifrons, S. Midler.
Vernacular Names.—! ? 1
S yet this species has been procured nowhere within
our limits except in the South Andaman Island.
We failed to find it in the Northern Island and in
the Cocos, and equally in the Nicobars.
Outside our limits it has not yet been observed in
the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Java, or Borneo ; but
it occurs all over the Celebes group, in Timor and
Flores ; has been obtained at Port Essington at the extreme
north of Australia, near Melbourne at the south, in New
Caledonia and New Zealand. On the other hand I cannot
find that it has been recorded from the Fiji Islands, the
Sooloo Islands, New Guinea, or, in fact, any of the islands except
Timor and Flores, lying between the Celebes and Australia,
New Caledonia and New Zealand on the one hand, and the
Andamans on the other.
This distribution is quite inexplicable, and I can only suppose
that, being a bird of retiring habits, it has hitherto escaped
observation in many localities where it does occur.
IN THE South Andaman it is a permanent resident, but whatever
it may have been in past times, is at present far from
common Davison, in our paper on the Islands of the Bay of
Bengal, remarked :—" It appears to frequent alike both salt and
fresh water. During the day it cither perches among the mangroves,
or settles down in some shady spot on the bank of a
stream ; when wounded it does not attempt at first to dive, but
swims for the nearest cover in which it hides itself, but when
hard pressed it dives, but does not remain long under water, and
appears to get soon exhausted. It feeds by night in the freshwater
ponds, and I was informed that it is to be seen during the
rains in small flocks in the morning and evening in the paddy
flats about Aberdeen. Sometimes, in going up the creeks, a pahwill
slip off the bank into tire water, and keep swimming about
2 0 yards ahead of the boat, only rising when hard pressed, but