102 THE COTTON TEAL.
Right through the year, summer and winter, this little
Goose or Cotton Teal abounds in the Calcutta market. In
number, even in January, it exceeds all the other Ducks put
together. Two or three hundred is not at all an uncommon
number to come in, in one morning. I have known over 500
to be brought. Where all these birds come from is a perfect
mystery to me. The limits within which the people assure me
that all their birds are capttircd, (very few are shot,) cannot, it
seems to me, supply the requisite number of a resident species
like this. In the case of migratory species, it matters less ;
you may clear off one area this year, but next year a new set
of migrants will restock it; but in the case of a non-migratory
species, I cannot understand how persecution like this, (fully
20.000 must be caught during the year,) does not exterminate it.
Of this, however, I sec no signs. It is more than ten years
since I first began to watch this market; I notice a manifest
falling-off in the numbers of the migratory Ducks, none in
those of the Cotton Teal.
The Deltas of the Ganges and Brahmaputra appear to be
its home, and thence it spreads in all directions, on the whole
growing rarer as we get further and further away, though here
and there, specially favourable conditions have, even in localities
far removed from its original habitat, greatly encouraged its
multiplication. So far as I know, it does not occur at any elevation
inside the Himalayas; it has not been recorded from any
of the Kashmir Lakes. Mr. Young does not include it in his
Kullu list, and I have never seen it in any of the lakes or
ponds further west up to the borders of Nepal. It is included in
Hodgson's "List of the Birds of Nepal," but Dr. Scully never
saw it there, and the notes on Hodgson's drawings show that
all his specimens came up from the Tcrai below.
Outside our limits we have observed this species in the
northern portions of the Malay Peninsula, and possibly it may
occur to the extreme south, though we have not yet met with
any suitable localities there.*
It is said to occur in Java and the Philippines, though I am
not aware that any specimens have been procured in recent
years in any of these islands, and the fact seems to require
verification. Pere David tells us that it visits Central China
in small numbers during the summer, and breeds there.
Although there is no record of the fact, I have reason to
believe that it occurs both in Siam and Independent Burma.t
•Davison, however, writing from Singapore says: " I saw a couple oLCotton
T>,1fellerthv mornin" in one of tile ponds in the 1'ubl.c Gardens here, and Mr.
Ntatof thV^tatlndent, tells me that they are wild birds that made their way
Tvve found h commo'n ,n Central Tenasserim and the ^^XZtfy^
Siting and Mr. Oates says that it is "excessively common throughout the year
all over die province of Pegu," so that my information, as to its occurrence in Siam
and Upper Emma, is very likely to be correct.
THE COTTON TEAL. 103
MODERATE-SIZED pieces of water, much overgrown with Singhara,
(Trnpa bispinosa.) and other water plants, and more or
less surrounded by trees, are the favourite haunts of the Cotton
Teal. Tame and familiar little birds, village ponds, at any rate
where Singhara are grown, seem to be just as much affected as
more secluded pieces of water. You may often see half-adozen
dabbling about in the water and weeds within ten yards
of the spot where the village washerman is noisily thrashing
the clothes of the community, more suo, on large stones or ribbed
slabs of wood, as if his one object in life was to knock every
tiling into rags at the earliest possible moment. Even the loud
half-grunt, half-groan, with which he relieves his feelings after
each mighty thwack, has no terror for these little birds, nor for
the Water Pheasants (Hydrophasiamis chirurgus), the Dab-Chicks
(PodicepsJluviatilis),ot the Whistling Teal (Dendrocygna javanicd)
—all so habitually seen in the same ponds as the Cotton Teal.
Fire a shot and they disappear like the Dab-Chicks for a
minute, but only to reappear and continue paddling about and
feeding as if nothing had happened, apparently, in most places
where I have met with them, confident that no attack on them
can be contemplated. No doubt in parts of the country where
they are habitually shot at they grow wilder and warier, but
in the North-West Provinces people so seldom shoot at them,
that you may often clear a large pond of other Water Fowl, firing
a dozen shots or more, and yet see the Cotton Teal swimming
about, quite at their ease and unalarmed, within thirty yards of
you. And it seems almost a pity to shoot them; they are
by no means particularly good eating; there is very little on
them, and they are such pretty bright little birds, and, as a rule,
so confiding that to pot them at five and twenty or thirty yards
distance, as I have occasionally seen done, is a down-right
shame. In Lower Bengal, however, where they arc both wilder
and much more numerous, they afford, at times, fairly good sport.
I mean where you can get them beaten and driven, and for
perhaps a quarter of an hour you have them dashing past you,
eight or ten per minute, in ones and twos, in all directions, and
at all angles. They fly very fast when well on the wing, and
while nothing is easier than to shoot them just as they have risen,
I have seen them missed, time after time, as they flashed by over
head, or in front or behind one, at distances of from thirty to
fifty yards. As a rule they fly low, but when thoroughly routed
up at some long frequented jht'l, though they cling to this latter
persistently, they fly high enough. They are hardy, denselyplumaged
birds, and will carry away a good deal of shot.
Their call is quite peculiar, a sort of sharp, short, chuckling
cackle, which they sometimes utter very frequently, at others
very seldom. I never quite understood this ; alike when at
their ease, when chased by dogs, when shot at and whirring
bewildered round and round their invaded sanctuary, when