I 12
killed her outright. But the strangest part of the business
was, that the villagers assured me that this nest was the Crow's
own nest, and that they Unt it every year after their young
had flown to the Whistling Teal. I should have verified this
the next spring, but left the Mynpooree District and never
again had the chance of revisiting the spot.
Where the Whistling Teal lives in moderate-sized tanks, and
where it is tame and fearless, it feeds, I believe, almost exclusively
in the water and during the day, chiefly in the fore and afternoons,
resting in trees during the middle of the day and roosting on
these at night. I have continually seen them going up to roost
about sunset, alighting first on the outside twigs of some large
branch, and presently sidling up well inside the tree and nearer to
the trunk. But where they are wilder, and where they frequent
rivers, they feed at night like other Ducks, and may be seen
about sunset leaving the river in large flocks to feed in the
neighbouring paddy fields and swamps.
They are chiefly, I think, vegetarians, and devour rice especially,
wild and cultivated, most greedily, but they also feed
on all kinds of seeds, rushes and other water plants, and on
the herbage, bulbs and corms of these and on grass, and at
times, small shells, worms and a variety of insects are found
in their stomachs. Once I shot one that disgorged, as it fell,
a tiny silvery fish about two inches in length. But, as a rule,
(and I have dissected many), they feed principally, I believe, on
vegetable substances, and I am therefore at a loss to account
for the peculiar, faint, half-muddy, half-fishy taste, that their
flesh always seems to have, and which, to me, makes them
unpalatable even when disguised with sauces in a stew.
Their call is a double hissing whistled note, uttered always
when they arc alarmed, or when they arc about to fly, and
often repeated during flight, but more seldom heard when
they are at rest and at their case, cither on the water or on trees.
Only when the female is sitting inside a hole where the male
cannot see her, the pair keep up a pretty continuous conversation.
Ol" FEW SPECIES docs the nidification vary so much according
to local circumstances as that of our present bird.
In one place it lays almost exclusively in stick nests, (of its
own building, or else old ones of Crows, Cormorants or l'addy
Birds slightly furbished up), fairly high up on large trees ; in
another in hollows between the huge branches of ancient trees,
such as a Wood Owl would use, or deep in holes in the trunks
ol these, such as a Nukhta would select. In other places it nests
on low palms, small thorny bushes, or dense clumps of bulrush
and reeds, or again on the ground in thick grass or on the
water on floating patches of tangled water weeds.
The laying season also varies in most places from the
middle of June until quite the middle of October, but in
Northern Ceylon and other southern localities where the N. E.
Monsoon rains are heavy, it breeds after the close of these, viz.,
from December or January to March.
I myself have only seen its nests in the Etawah District, in
Mynpooree, Cawnpore, Muttra, Allyghur, and Meerut.
I have found its eggs in two situations,—in hollows in trees, or
between the larger branches of these, cither unlined or slightly
lined with grass and feathers,—or in old Crow's and Kite's nests,
which it lines in a similar fashion. In all cases the trees in or on
which I have found it nesting have been in the immediate proximity
of water. This, however, is not at all the rule elsewhere.
With us it lays in July and August, and a few eggs may be
found even during the first-half of September, but the majority
have, I think, hatched off by the first of that month. Twelve is
the maximum number of eggs that I have seen in any nest,
and ten or eleven are, I think, the usual complement.
Captain G. F. L. Marshall remarks that " this species builds
in trees a nest of sticks, and lays about seven to ten eggs.
" A nest, found on the 25th of July near Bolundshahr, contained
only one egg, on which both the parent birds were sitting. It
was a tolerably compact structure of twigs in a Keckur tree at
the edge of a jhfl about eight feet from the road ; it was at the
side of a metalled road near a large town. I shot the male, but
missed the female with the left barrel. When I returned next
day, there was a pair of birds on the nest again, so that the
female had apparently provided herself with a fresh mate in
that short interval. In another case the nest was swarming with
ants and maggots."
Mr. A. Anderson says:—"Jerdon could never have found a
full clutch of the eggs of the Whistling Teal, or he would not
have limited the number to " six or eight" (BIRDS OF India,
Vol. Ill, p. 790). Ordinarily this Duck lays fully a dozen eggs ;
but I am indebted to my friend, Mr. Fynes-Clinton, for two
clutches of twelve and fourteen respectively, which he took
from the same nest ; whether these were laid by one or two
birds must of course remain an open question.
"On the 29th June 1872, Mr. Clinton flushed a bird from
the top of a low Date Palm, (Phojirix dactylifera), and found
the first-mentioned lot (twelve) ; on the 13th July he happened
to visit the same locality, and to his surprise found the second
clutch in exactly the same situation ; the Duck was on her
eggs. Now the dates are so coincident that, supposing these
twenty-six eggs to be the produce of two different females, the
second one must have laid her first egg the very day after the
removal of the first batch.
"As t ing ordero : —sit uation, the choice may be mentioned in the followlim(
b1estd) .—treDeesp r;e ssion at the fork of the lower branches of large-
P