Lieutenant Colonel Prjevalsky, who found it in the Koko-nor region of
Tibet, and it was later recorded by Prince Henri d'Orleans from Tsang in
the Tibetan highlands. Apparently specimens from Yuen-nan have not been
preserved in museums and the bird was not known to occur in this portion of
China.

Along the Yangtze on our way westward we shot a good many mallard ducks
(_Anas boscas_) and ruddy sheldrakes (_Casarca casarca_); the latter are
universally known as "brahminy ducks" by the foreigners in Burma and
Yuen-nan, but they are not true ducks. The name is derived from the bird's
beautiful buff and rufous color which is somewhat like that of the robes
worn by the Brahmin priests. In America the name "sheldrake" is applied
erroneously to the fish-eating mergansers, and much confusion has thus
arisen, for the two are quite unrelated and belong to perfectly distinct
groups. The mergansers have narrow, hooked, saw-toothed beaks quite unlike
those of the sheldrakes, and their habits are entirely dissimilar.

The brahminy ducks, although rather tough, are not bad eating. We usually
found them feeding in fields not far from the river or in flooded rice
dykes, and very often sitting in pairs on the sand banks near the water.
They have a bisyllabic rather plaintive note which is peculiarly
fascinating to me and, like the honk of the Canada goose, awakens memories
of sodden, wind-blown marshes, bobbing decoys, and a leaden sky shot
through with V-shaped lines of flying birds.

Mallards were frequently to be found with the sheldrakes, and we had good
shooting along the river and in ponds and rice fields. We also saw a few
teal but they were by no means abundant. Pheasants were scarce. We shot a
few along the road and near some of our camps, but we found no place in
Yuen-nan where one could have even a fair day's shooting without the aid of
a good dog. This is strikingly different from Korea where in a walk over
the hillsides a dozen or more pheasants can be flushed within an hour.

After two and one-half days' travel up the Yangtze we turned westward
toward Wei-hsi and camped on a beautiful flat plain beside a tree-bordered
stream. It was a cold clear night and after dinner and a smoke about the
fire we all turned in.

Both of us were asleep when suddenly a perfect bedlam of angry exclamations
and Chinese curses roused the whole camp. In a few moments Wu came to our
tent, almost speechless with rage and stammered, "Damn fool