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The Eastern White-eyed Duck.

Anas (Fuligula) baeri, Badde, Reis. S.O. Sibir. ii, p. 376, pi. 15 (1863). Nyroca baeri, Salvadori, Cat. B. M. xxvii, p. 344. Fuligula baeri, F. Finn, P. A. S. B. 1896, p. 61; id. J, A. S. B. lxvi, pt. 2, p. 525 ; Sclater, P. Z. S. 1896, p. 780.

This Duck is a very near ally of N. ferruginea, but is distinguished by both sexes having the head and neck black, glossed with green in the male, but brownish and with very little gloss in the female, in which sex also the lores are rufous-brown. The basal portion of the primaries, too, in the present species is light greyish brown, not white. In other respects the two species are similar, there is the same white speculum on the secondaries, and the same sharp division between the chestnut breast and white abdomen in the male, whilst the two pass into each other in the female.

Bill bluish, the base and nail black ; irides white or pale yellow ; feet lead-grey (David).

Length 18 ; tail 2.4 ; wing 8.25 ; tarsus 1.3 ; bill from gape 2.

Distribution. Eastern Siberia, China, and Japan. Although specimens appear to have been obtained in Bengal by Duvaucel, the occurrence of this Pochard in India had been completely overlooked until Mr. Frank Finn, in February 1896, obtained several specimens in the Calcutta bazaar and identified them. He then, on examining the specimens of Fuligula nyroca collected by Mr. Blyth, found that one of them, which had been in the Asiatic Society's Museum since 1842, was a female of N. baeri. I learn from Mr. Finn that in the present year (1897) this Duck has again been obtained commonly in Calcutta, so it is probable that this species has hitherto been confounded with the nearly allied N. ferruginea.

Nyroca baeri, (Radde).

 

Outer primaries with the outer web much darker than the inner; inner primaries with both webs white, like the speculum; all tipped dusky.

Axillaries white, mottled with brown at the tip.

Bill dark, with no trace of red; of about equal width throughout.

Under tail-coverts pure white.

Head and neck black.

MALE :—Head and neck rich glossy black. FEMALE:—Head and neck plain black; a chestnut patch on either side of the base of the upper mandible.

VERNACULAR NAMES :—None known.

As remarked when treating of the last species, it is impossible to say what the range of the Eastern White-eyed Pochard in India may be, but I shall assume the western limit of its migration to be the longitude of Calcutta. There can be little doubt that this species is the White­ eyed Pochard of Upper Burma, but I have never had the opportunity offered me of examining the Pochard which is so abundant near Mandalay. I may, however, state that when Veterinary Captain G. H. Evans came to the Natural History Museum some little time ago, I happened to have specimens of all the Indian Ducks exposed to view on tables, and he immediately picked out the Eastern White-eyed Pochard as the species he had met with near Myingyan.

Although there is a specimen of this Pochard in the Indian Museum, at Calcutta, dating back to 1842, it was not until quite recently that Mr. F. Finn drew attention to the two allied species and separated them. He appears to have procured many specimens of the Eastern species between November 25th and January 5th in the Calcutta market, and he remarks that for a short time after their first appearance they are as common as their Western relative. He also noticed the Eastern species in the Calcutta market in February.

The present species is only a winter visitor to the eastern part of the Empire. It is probably this Pochard which Mr. Inglis procured in Cachar. It is doubt­ less also the species of which Mr. Hume remarks :—" Rather scarce in Manipur. I saw it however at two jheels, besides the Logtak, where it was often seen without its being at all in force." Mr. Hume apparently did not shoot any of these birds in Manipur, for there are no specimens from that country in the Hume Collection, and he appears to have assumed that the Manipur birds were of the common Indian species.

Captain F. T. Williams informs me that a Pochard of this type is found on the Chindwin river. Captain T. S. Johnson found a White-eyed Pochard common near Mandalay, and Major G. Rippon writes to me that he is aware of the difference between the two White-eyed Pochards, and that to the best of his belief he has obtained the Eastern species at Shwebo, Minhla, Sagain and Meiktila in Upper Burma, and at Fort Stedman in the Southern Shan States.

This Eastern White-eye is found in summer in Kamtschatka and Eastern Siberia. In winter it migrates to Japan and China, and it will probably be found to be a common bird at that season throughout the Indo-Burmese countries, Upper Burma and the Shan States.

I can find nothing of any interest regarding this Duck in the writings of authors who have treated of the birds of Eastern Asia. Its habits however, are not in the least likely to vary in any important particular from those of the Western White-eyed Pochard. Mr. F. Finn has kept some of these Ducks in captivity in Calcutta. He writes :—" As to the habits of this Duck I have little to say. In general appearance it is lighter and less ' dumpy ' than its near ally; the head and neck and general shape are less Fuliguline than in that species, and recall a Mallard somewhat. It of course swims and dives excellently, and is a less clumsy walker than the Common White-eye. The male has a curious habit of contracting its neck and jerking it backwards in a curve—no doubt a pairing gesture."

This species resembles the Western White-eyed Pochard in the general pattern of its plumage. The difference lies in the colour of the head and neck. In the male of the Eastern species these parts are of a deep black, beautifully glossed with green and purple; there is the same white spot on the chin.

In the female of the Eastern species, the head and neck are black, without any gloss, and slightly brownish in parts. The chin-spot is present. There is also a large patch of chestnut on each side of the face, near the base of the upper mandible. The chestnut of the breast is not so bright as in the male, nor so sharply defined from the white abdomen.

A bird of this species, sexed as a male, which died in the Zoological Gardens of London in June, and the skin of which is preserved in the British Museum, appears to be in post-nuptial plumage. It resembles the male in winter plumage in many respects, having the back and scapulars speckled and vermiculated; and the chestnut of the breast of a dark colour and sharply defined from the white of the abdomen, but it has the head of the female and exhibits a large amount of chestnut on the face and at the base of the bill.

Length. Male : length about 18 ; wing 8 1/4 ; tail 2 1/2. Female : length about 17 1/2; wing 8 ; tail 2 1/2.

According to Mr. Finn, the male has the bill dark grey or greyish black with a black nail and a grey patch at the tip; the female has the bill darker, with the grey patch less distinct. The male has white irides, but in one bird of this sex they were pale cloudy greenish yellow; the female has the irides brown, sometimes grey, sometimes a mixture of brown and white. In both sexes, the feet are grey with dark joints; the legs black, The weight has not been recorded.

The Eastern White-eyed Pochard.

Male 18", Legs lead-grey. Bill bluish, base and nail black. Head and upper neck black, glossed green. Primaries, basal part light grey. Otherwise as in N. ferruginea.— Female: Chestnut patch on lores. E. Siberia, China, and Japan. Common in Bengal. (B. 1607.)

Nyroca baeri.

Boro Lalbigra, Cachari.

That Baer's white-eye is a very uncertain visitor to our Empire, is proved by the fact that Hume and his numerous collectors and correspondents never got to know about it. Yet the adult is a most unmistakable bird, the green-glossed black head contrasting so strikingly with the chocolate breast which it shares with the common white-eyed pochard. In fact, except for the head, the two are much alike, but an important difference is that the white on the belly of the Baer's white-eye runs irregularly up on to the flanks, thus showing above the water-line, and furnishing a means of distinction, even at a distance, from the common white-eye.

The sexes are more alike in this species than in the ordinary white-eye, but the female is distinguishable by the presence of a rusty area between the eye and the beak, con­trasting with the green of the rest of the head. This, like the plumage generally, is less rich than in the drake, but the difference is very slight, and it is quite a mistake to describe the female's head as simply black. "When a bird shows no green gloss it is generally small, and probably indicates a cross with the commoner species, which is very noticeably the smaller of the two.

So much is this the case, that it is one of the distinctions of the young birds, which in this species are dull light-brown as in the last, but have a rusty tinge about the face and a distinct black shade on the crown which is not found in young common white-eyes. The difference is especially marked in the bill, which is about half an inch longer in the eastern than in the western white-eye; in fact, the whole bird is longer and less dumpy, though the family resemblance is most obvious and close.

Even in its ordinary wintering-places in China, the eastern white-eye seems somewhat irregular in its occurrence, and little, is really known about it except that it breeds in East Siberia. There has certainly been a considerable winter westward movement of the species of late years, beginning apparently with the year 1896, when it turned up in the Calcutta Market, by no means an unexploited locality. The rush appeared to culminate in the next winter, the birds then becoming gradually scarcer; in 1902, up to December when I left India for good, there had been none in; but about February was about the likeliest date for them ; in 1896-7 they were as common as ordinary white-eyes. Mr. Baker also got them, after the occurrence of the species here was made known, from Cachar, Sylhet, near Bhamo, and the Shan States, which is what one would expect, although the birds do not seem to have been numerous, as they apparently were in Bengal; he only got three from Burma, for instance.

Although not recorded on the Continent, the birds even pushed as far as England, where two have been shot of late years, one at Tring, and one while this book was being written, in Notts. The only observation worth recording here I was able to make on these birds, of which I kept several alive in the museum tank, and got others for the Calcutta and London Zoos, was that when kept full-winged in an aviary they rose as easily as surface-feeding ducks ; this may mean they escape netting much more than other pochards. I may also mention that the note and courting gestures of the species are, as one would expect, like those of its common ally, and it is certainly no better to eat, according to those who have tried it. As confirming the view of those who attribute the abnormal lingering of pairs of migratory birds in India to some injury incapacitating one partner from migration to the northern breeding-grounds, I may, in conclusion, cite the case of an unpinioned male of this species I had, which remained in the museum tank for at least two summers along with a pinioned pair ; indeed, I never even saw him fly, and ultimately I caught him when he was in moult and gave him away to go to Europe along with the pinioned birds. Of course he and not the pinioned drake might have been mated to the female, but even if he were not, he evidently did not like to leave his companions, and his constancy rather tends to show that flocks of the species never passed over during his stay with me, or he might have been tempted to do so.

The Eastern White-eye.

Anas {Fuligula) baeri Radde, Reise Siberien,ii, p. 376, pi. 15 (1863) (Amur, Siberia). Nyroca baeri. Blanf. & Oates, iv, p. 461.

Vernacular names. Bor-kali-muri (Assam).

Description.- - Male. Similar to the Indian White-eye but with the whole head and neck black glossed with green, except for a large spot of white at the angle of the chin ; the glossy green head and neck grade into rich rufous on the breast, the rufous richer than in the preceding bird; rest of plumage only differs in being brighter and cleaner looking.

Colours of soft parts. Iris white or golden-yellow, generally the latter; bill dull slate-blue, the basal third, tip and nail darker or black; legs and feet greyish-yellow to lead-grey, the joints and webs darker.

Measurements. Wing, 6 208 to 240 mm., $ 193 to 215 mm.; culmen 39 to 42 mm.; width at base 18.5 against 16.2 mm. in N. r. rufa and at broadest part nearly 23 mm. as against under 20 mm. in that bird.

The female and young differ from the male in having no black glossy head and are extremely dim cult to distinguish from the Common White-eye. Their large size and proportionately larger bill should, however, draw attention.

Distribution. Amur to Kamschatka and Japan, migrating in Winter South to China and to Burma and Eastern India.' In India this duck was first obtained by Duvacel in 1825 and again by Blyth in 1842 and 1845. No further specimens were recorded, however, until 1896, when Finn got eleven specimens in the Calcutta bazaar. From that time for several years it was obtained regularly in some numbers in Eastern Bengal. In Assam it occurs every Winter, though most young birds and females are doubtless overlooked from their very close likeness to the Common White-eye. I shot one or more specimens in Cachar, Lakhimpur and Tezpur, whilst both Higgins and Campbell shot others near Imphal in Manipur. Even in Burma, however, N. r. rufa is the common form, though Baer's Pochard is probably a regular but undetected visitor. For several years many sportsmen watched carefully for it and sent me many skins about which they were doubtful but only three of these from the Shan States and one from Bhamo proved to be N. r. baeri.

Nidification. Seebohm says that the Eastern White-eye breeds on the Amur, from which river I have received a single egg. It makes a nest like that of the Common White-eye in thick reed-beds but no full clutch of eggs seems to have been taken, so the number is unknown. In appearance they only differ from those of the preceding bird in being rather larger, six eggs averaging 52.1 x 38.3 mm.: maxima 55.0 X 39.0 mm.; minima 51.0 x 38.0 and 52.4 x 36.4 mm.

Habits. Very little recorded but those birds I have seen were certainly very strong fliers, outpacing the Western White-eye, with which they were associating. Finn also comments on the great flying powers of this duck but considers those he had in captivity to have been less expert divers than their Western cousins. The Assamese shikaries, who recognize this bird as being a distinct form, assert that it is a better flier, swimmer and diver than the common form and say that it is much more shy and difficult to get a shot at.

Anas (Fuligula) baeri Radde, Reise Sibirien, vol. ii, p. 376, pl. 15, 1863: Amur, Siberia.