THE COTTON TEAL.
all is peace, and when waning men and dogs appear " in penetralia
hastes" in the winter and during the breeding season, in the
finest and the wettest weather, I have found them both noisy
and silent. No doubt, as a rule, they always chuckle incessantly
as they fly about after having been disturbed, but yet, at
limes, I have noticed party after party swish by without uttering
a sound. When quite undisturbed, they are more commonly
silent, or at most call only occasionally, but I have watched
parties, which nothing whatsoever was meddling with or threatening,
and which were yet chattering with one consent, like ladies
at a tea-fight.
During the cold season and spring where at all numerous
they are commonly seen in flocks of from ten to thirty ; in the
breeding season (though there may be fifty about the same
pond) they always keep distinctly in pairs, and during the latter
portion of the summer and autumn they are in families which
do not, I think, coalesce into flocks before the middle of November,
or even later.
Though they rise rather awkwardly, they fly, as already
noticed, with great rapidity and ease, turning and twisting with
a facility unequalled, I think, by any of our other Water Fowl. I
have seen Peregrines (wild and tame) strike almost every kind
of Duck and leal that wc get commonly in Upper India, but I
never saw one get the better of a Cotton Teal. More than once
I have seen these Falcons swoop at them, under conditions which
would have ensured the capture of even a Common Teal (and
these are pretty sharp flyers also); but the little Girri, twisted out
of the way, as easily as an unwearied Hare from before a Greyhound,
and long before the Peregrine could recover itself, was
down on and wider the water.
They swim pretty rapidly, though rather jerkily, but they dive
like Dab-Chicks. On land they seldom venture, though I have
seen them occasionally feeding or resting on small grassy islands;
but, as Myth long ago remarked, they cannot walk at all, they
only wabble along, shuffling as if their bodies were too heavy for
their legs, yet when on trees—and it is on these that they pass
almost the whole of their time not spent on the water or on the
wing—they stand firm enough, and betray no weakness in the
lower extremities.
They feed chiefly during the hours of daylight, sleeping
usually on trees, where I have repeatedly seen them go to roost
about dusk, but on bright moonlight nights I have occasionally
seen them in the water with other Wild Fowl.
Their food consists of rice grains, especially the seed of the
wild rice known as " Pasaic" in Upper India, and of the shoots
of various kinds of aquatic plants, worms, water insects, and
their larva;. Once or twice I have found what I believed to be
the remains of minute fishes and fresh-water crustaceans in
their stomachs, but of this I could not be quite certain.
THE COTTON TEAL. 1 0 5
Tickell remarks :—
" In large sheltered sheets of water they seldom shift their
quarters, but pass the time frolicking about the clear spaces
between the beds of the water lily and other aquatic weeds, or
taking their insect food from the floating leaves, at night resting
securely amid the tangle and coarse herbage matting over the
centre of the pool. When off their feed these birds are at times
very frolicksome, flying rapidly round and round the pond, the
male making a singular drumming, quacking, which has been
correctly enough compared to the words " Fix baggonets ! fix
baggonets !" and has gained the bird that familiar cognomen
amongst our soldiers in India. The Koles and Oorias have
named it from its cry, "Lerrcget-perreget," also " Merom-derebet,"
the word " mcrom" amongst the Koles meaning goat, the bleat
of which animal is not unlike the voice of this Goslet.
" When fired at, the Girras, after a circle or two round the tank
or pond, will frequently alight again, and allow of a second or
even a third shot If the sheet of water be broad, they will
then usually settle in the middle, and there remain out of range,
in spite of yells and shouts, and splashing with sticks, and pelting
with stones—devices to which, with the aid of the neighbouring
villagers, the young sportsman must have recourse,
unless a canoe be procurable, in which to invade the birds in their
fastnesses. If the water be not capacious enough for the Girras
to settle out of shot, they will fly off to a neighbouring pond,
but never to a great distance. Their flight is exceedingly swift,
but low, just clearing the tops of the trees or skimming over
the surface of the water, and they afford very pretty practice at
single shots as they come, sweeping over a bank or a mango
grove, to alight on the pond where the gunner has taken his
stand.
" This pretty little miniature Goose—or, as Jerdon terms it,
Goslet—from its comparative tameness and numbers, is amongst
the first objects to attract the notice of the young sportsman
anxious to try his hand at " Duck-shooting." But it is also,
alas ! the not unfrequent innocent cause of death to its too
ardent pursuers. There have been too many instances of soldiers
and other Europeans, especially amongst new arrivals, who have
been miserably drowned in swimming far into tanks and jhfls
to pick up the bodies of these birds which they have just shot.
The pond appears so small, the water so clear, the little Duck
with its plump white breast floating upwards so tempting—so
in goes a stout young fellow, and in a dozen strokes is up with
his prize, when the deadly weeds, which he had not seen from
the bank, but which in such spots spread like a net some two
or three feet beneath the surface, lap round his legs and close
upon him in a gentle but irresistible embrace. In vain to kick
and plunge ; each effort involves the swimmer more. In vain to
cry for help, with none but one or two timid or apathetic natives
O