206 THE WHITE-EYED POCHARD.
to the Arctic regions, but the point raised is an important one.
Not only of this species (and certainly not more commonly
in this than in many others), but of nearly all our ducks, I
have from time to time shot specimens, minus part or the
whole of one or both feet. The missing portions always seem
to have been cut clean off. The cicatrised portions are always
fleshy coloured. I am sure that in the course of my shooting
I have killed more than fifty birds thus maimed, and some of
them—like the Marbled Teal-—birds that never go near freezing
or nearly freezing water. What causes these mutilations ? They
do not occur, I think, in India ; without exception all I have
thus seen have had the wounds perfectly healed. Steel traps
are not generally in use in Central or Northern Asia. What
takes off the feet ? Do any kinds of pike or other predaceous
fish snap them off? Obliged as I am to reject the frost-bite
and steel-trap theories, I can offer no more plausible solution ;
but I confess that it by no means satisfies even my own mind,
and in default of corroborative evidence I cannot expect
others to accept it.
When on the wing the flight of this species is fairly, but
by no means very rapid. They rise with some little difficulty, and
always by preference against the wind (indeed when there is no
wind they are slow in getting under weigh.) If flushed from water,
they strike it repeatedly as they rise with their feet, much after
the fashion of Coots, but in a less exaggerated style. Rising
out of the reeds, they fluster up and go off much like Partridges
with a low, straight flight, often dropping suddenly, almost
Qnail-like, after a short flight.
On land, one never sees them many paces distant from the
water's edge, and running down to it, they shuffle along most
clumsily.
In the water they are at home ; they swim with great rapidity
and dive like the -I was goingto use an inappropriate simile,
but they dive marvellously. Indeed what becomes of them is
often a puzzle ; the instant that, wounded, they touch the water,
they disappear, and not unfrcquently that is the last you see
of them ; at most they only rise once or twice, and then disappear
for good. It is a waste of time to pursue them ; if they
do rise, give them instantly a second barrel. If not, you must
trust to the dogs picking them up in the rushes near the margin
later in the day when all is quiet. But even the best dogs will
be baffled, and I have seen a well-trained retriever, after skirmishing
in weeds and water for several minutes in pursuit of
a wounded White-eye, come out with his tail between his legs
and a general crest-fallen appearance, clearly under the impression
that, in consequence of some delusion, he had been beguiled
into hunting a Dabchick—a bird that from his earliest puppyhood
he had been taught to consider altogether beneath his
notice.
THE WHITE-EYED POCHARD, 267
They are with us quite omnivorous ; no doubt their food
chiefly consists of vegetable matter—leaves, stems, roots and
seeds of grass, rush, sedge and all kinds of aquatic herbage ;
but besides this I have noted at different times, amongst the
contents of their stomachs, delicate fresh-water shells and
shrimps, insects (including several species of Neuroptera and
Lepidoptera!) and their larva, worms, grubs and small fishes.
I have often, when lying up hid in the reeds^ waiting for more
valuable fowl to come over, watched little parties of them
feeding in some tiny, weedy, reed-hedged opening. Part of
the time they swim about nibbling at the herbage or picking
shells or insects off the lotus leaves ; but they are continually
disappearing below the surface, often re-appearing with a whole
bunch of feathery, slimy weed, which all present join in gobbling
up. Sometimes they remain a very long time out of sight,
I should guess nearly two minutes (it seems an age) ; but
generally they do not, when thus feeding, keep under more than
say from forty to fifty seconds.
I fancy that they feed preferentially by day ; first, because
when in their favourite haunts I have invariably found them,
when I have had opportunities of watching them unpercetved,
busy feeding at all hours, and never asleep as night-feeding
ducks so constantly are between 11 a.m. and 3 P.M. ; and, secondly,
because I have so rarely killed them when flight shooting.
When settled on some comfortable, rush-embosomed, wecdinterwoven
broad, I am pretty certain that they do not change
their quarters at night-fall, as when encamped near any of their
chosen day-haunts 1 have heard their harsh familiar call at
intervals throughout the midnight hours ; but of course in the
less common case, when they affect bare-shored lakes or rivers
by day, and some few do do this, they must needs go elsewhere
to feed during the night, and in such situations I have once
or twice seen them at midday snoozing at the water's edge.
Their quack or note is peculiar, though something like that
of the Pochard, a harsh kirr, kere, kirr, with which
one soon becomes acquainted as they invariably utter it,
"staccato" as they bustle up from the rushes, often within
a few yards of the boat.
What a difference a change of scene and fortunes makes in
birds as well as men. The White-eye is not the only class of
old Indians that improves vastly by a sojourn in Europe!
Here, this duck is very inferior eating, very fat no doubt
at times, but almost always tainted by a certain marshy twang,
but in Spain Colonel Irby tells us that "its flesh is not only
like that of the Red-headed and Red-crested Pochards excellent
eating, but far surpasses either in that respect."
Here, my advice to persons thinking of eating them, when any
other wholesome food is available, must be Punch's, to those
contemplating matrimony, DON'T ! "