do not always fly ; indeed I have seen a large flock of several
hundred birds disappear as if by magic ; all having dived
as if by one consent. If your boat can go, and you arc very
sharp, you may in such cases have great fun ; a tremendous
spurt is put on in the direction in which the mass of the ducks
seemed heading as they dived. In a minute they begin to
pop up round you within shot ; they come up with a regular
jerk, generally showing little more than their heads and necks,
and there arc just about three seconds during which you can
shoot them, before realizing the circumstances they again
disappear, I was once one of a party often guns in five boats,
that got right in amongst a large flock of these Pochards that
wouldn't rise, and kept them diving for, I suppose, ten minutes,
during which a fusilade, such as I have seldom heard, was
energetically kept up. The result was five birds killed, and
three of the party and two boatmen hit (but not badly) with
shot which had glanced up off the water. Four out of the five
I killed, though several better shots were present, and this by
a simple expedient that is worth knowing—I had a few cartridges
for Pelicans containing each eight, eighty to the lb. bullets ;
and. finding I could not shoot quick enough to catch the birds
before they got under water, I used these slug cartridges, fired
only at those birds which rose close to the boat, and shot well
under them.
At other times they will rise before you arc within a hundred
yards, and taking short flights, plump down again suddenly
into the water, stem first, as if shot. In such cases you
may at times work them very satisfactorily, if you chance to
have a considerable party and several boats, and the lake is long
and comparatively narrow. If they arc comfortably settled on
a sheet of water that suits them and where they have sojourned
in peace for a mouth or two, it is scarcely possible . to drive
them away from it the first day. Next day, after they have
been thoroughly harried, not a bird is sometimes to be seen, but
they will scarcely quit till after dark. In this respect they arc
like Coots, and if means and appliances are available, they may
be worked just as we work these towards the close of autumn
at home. The day after the failure above related, (we spent
the rest of the day snipe-shooting, killing a good many teal
and other ducks round the margin), we found, directly
we got on the water, that all the Tufted Pochards, instead of
diving, kept rising as we approached. Then I bethought me
of our Norfolk Coot-shootings, formed line, boats about
So yards apart (this was too far, but we had to cover the
breadth of the jhil), put a gun on the shore on each side and
went straight at them. At first they only rose and flew ahead of
us, but as we got nearer the end they began to come back
over the line, pretty high, but many of them well within shot.
\Yhen all weie up, we turned and worked backwards, in the
same order, and then back again, and so on five or six times
getting amongst us sixty or seventy Pochards, besides other
things, and yet when wc left off at dusk, the flock was there
all the same. Next morning not a Pochard was to be seen,
whereas the Gadwall, Teal, and other ducks that had left
before our third or fourth turn was completed were all back,
famously on the qui j i w , but in their wonted numbers.
Though noisy enough as they splash up in a crowd out of
the water, and recognizable at any time by the sharp whistling
of their wings as they pass over head, they arc, in winter at
any rate, singular!)' silent birds when let alone. When alarmed
and flushed they occasionally emit the regular grating Pochard
call, kurr, kurr, but not so loudly, I think, as some of the other
species.
On land I have never once seen them, but I should expect
them to be clumsy walkers like most of the other Pochards.
Their food is perhaps more animal than vegetable. They
constantly devour small fish, and one finds every kind of waterinsect,
worm, grub, and shells, small lizards, frogs, spawn,
&c., in their stomachs. Still like the rest they eat the leaves,
stems and roots of water plants freely, and I have several notes
of birds which had dined (or breakfasted) entirely off some
white shining onion-like bulb.
As a rule, they are not, I think, good ducks for the table.
I have occasionally found them good enough ; but in earlier
times they proved so often rank, or froggy or fishy, that of late
years I have never cooked them when anything else was procurable
; and where you get these you arc so certain to get Teal,
or Gadwall, or Snipe, or Godwit, or Ruffs and Reeves—all firstrate
birds—that I have not perhaps given them a sufficient trial,
and I have heard some sportsmen declare them excellent.
CONSIDERING WHERE Blanford met with this species in May,
and presumably about to breed, we might well expect to find
them breeding in the lakes of Kashmir, in 340 North Latitude,
and at an elevation of between 4,000 and 5,000 feet. But so
far as is yet known, this species does not even occur in Kashmir,
and for all particulars of its nidification we must refer to
European writers.
Dresser says:—"The Tufted Duck breeds in the northern
portions of Europe, the cgLjs being deposited early in June. The
nest is placed on the ground, not far from or even close to the
water. A nest, sent to me by Mr. Moves, taken at Muoniovaara,
in Lapland, on the 20th June, consists of grass bents and a few
leaves felted together with a mass of sooty brownish-black
down, having dull greyish-white centres ; and the eggs, eight
in number, are uniform pale olivc-grccn or greenish buff in
colour, smooth and polished in texture of shell, and in size
M t