Hitherto this species has not occurred in China. Prjevalski
did not observe it in Mongolia or Chinese Tibet, nor has any one
recorded it from any part of Siberia. But our explorers met
with it in Eastern Turkestan,* and Severtzoff tells us that in
Western Turkestan also it is everywhere common and breeds.
In winter it is found in Afghanistan and Beluchistan,
and in many parts of Persia, where also it breeds in the neighbourhood
of Shiraz, and probably other suitable localities.
About the Caspian it is common. It has been sent from the
head of the Persian Gulf and from near Bagdad. But it does
not seem to have been noticed in Asia Minor or Palestine, and
it must be very rare in Egypt, if it really occurs there, for
neither Heuglin nor Shelly ever met with it. In Algiers it is
not uncommon, and many breed there, and stragglers are
occasionally met with at Tangicrs ; but, beyond this there is no
record of its occurrence in Northern Africa. It is found
throughout Southern Europe, breeding in Spain, Italy, Sicily and
occasionally in the Dobrudscha and Southern Russia. Northwards
it becomes rare, though it has occurred occasionally in
Belgium, Southern Denmark and England ( and once in Scotland),
but never apparently in Ireland, Sweden, Norway,
Finland or Northern Russia.
The normal range of this species is, therefore, very restricted ;
and, according to our present information, seems to be little
more than Algiers and the countries immediately north of the
Mediterranean and Black Seas, the Caspian, Turkestan, (Eastern
and Western) Persia, the countries between this and India, and
a considerable portion of the latter.
LARGE NUMBERS, compared to what occur in Europe, visit us
during the cold season ; and, when it is borne in mind that they
are fairly common over a belt of country stretching from
Kandahar to Sadiya, some 2,000 miles in length and averaging
certainly 400 in breadth, and that they do extend (though rarer
there) hundreds of miles south of this, there can remain little
question that the real head-quarters of this species are India
in winter and l'urkestan in summer.
They arrive late ; the earliest date on which I have seen them
in the Doab is the 21st of October ; and it is quite the middle
of November before the great bulk of them have fairly settled
down in the plains of Upper India. They are even later further
south, and, on the Eastern Narra, Doig says that they are rarely
well in before the first week of December.
* Tints Scully says :—" This handsome duck was not observed in winter, but
was very common near Yarkand during the summer. It is a fine diver, and has
a peculiar manner of emerging from the water with a sharp spring; it carries
its head well bent back over its shoulders, and is not easily approached. The bird
is only a seasonal visitant to Kashgharia, where it breeds ; the nest is said to be
placed among tushes growing in marshes, and the eggs are reported to be of a
green colour."
I have never shot them after the 8th of April in the North-
West Provinces, and further south I believe they have
mostly left by the third week in March ; but in the submontane
tracts and in the Lower Himalayas they arrive earlier and linger
somewhat later. Thus I shot a specimen at Nau-koocha T&l,
not very far from Nynee Tal, on the 13th of October, and again
I got one in Kullu, in the stream near Juggut-sukh, on the 3rd
of May.
Still, deep, waters are what the Red-crested Pochard loves,
(though on migration it will halt in any streamlet pool)
and deep waters in which grow plenty of weeds. It is chiefly,
therefore, in large lakes and broad rivers at points in their
course where these are sluggish and plenty of submerged weeds
grow near the margin that they are to be met with in any
numbers. A stray bird or pair is, however, occasionally met with
in apparently most unsuitable localities; and I killed a fine
solitary male once, in a small masonry tank, barely one
hundred yards square, just outside the walls of Ajectmul or
Oreya, I forget which.
Habitually they keep in moderate-sized flocks of from ten to
thirty, but occasionally on very large pieces of water they arc
seen in thousands.
Mr. George Reid writes:—" Never before or since have
I seen so many of these ducks as I saw one December
morning on a lnrge jhil in the Fyzabad district. The whole
surface of the lake was literally one moving mass of these
lovely ducks."
It was early in December, too, that I saw just such a sight 011
an immense broad in the north of the Etawah district. We had
had a very heavy and late rainy season, and this jhil, always
large, was then Immense. All night long, pitched as my tent
was on a masonry revetted terrace, rising immediately out of
the water, I had heard fowl coming in ; and the next morning,
before dawn, I was out in my punt, working softly round the
margin to the western side, so as to have the fowl, when twilight
broke, against the daylight sky. I soon made out by their cries
that the mass of the fowl were Pochards, that there were a vast
number of them, and that a great number of them belonged to
the present species. Day dawned, and I could soon see a dense
mass of fowl, but far more distant than I expected, probably fully
a quarter of a mile off, and much too far to make anything of,
even with glasses, in the dim light and through the wavy curtains
of almost impalpable mist that flickered above the water. Lying
down I paddled towards them. Very soon a fresh north-east
wind (and I was heading that way) sprang up against me ; quite
a sea rose ; I was perpetually grounding (a few months later this
whole side of the lake was one waving sea of wheat), and they
were swimming away steadily against the wind, so that it was
bright sunlight before I got within 200 yards, and then I could