occupied with their
young.

The cotton-teal (_Nettopus coromandelianus_) usually lays its eggs in
a hole in a mango or other tree. The hollow is sometimes lined with
feathers and twigs. It is not very high up as a rule, from six to
twelve feet above the ground being the usual level. The tree selected
for the nesting site is not necessarily close to water. Thirteen or
fourteen eggs seem to be the usual clutch, but as many as twenty-two
have been taken from one nest. Young teal, when they emerge from the
egg, can swim and walk, but they are unable to fly. No European seems
to have actually observed the process whereby they get from the nest
to the ground or the water. It is generally believed that the parent
birds carry them. Mr. Stuart Baker writes that a very intelligent
native once told him that, early one morning, before it was light, he
was fishing in a tank, when he saw a bird flutter heavily into the
water from a tree in front of him and some twenty paces distant. The
bird returned to the tree, and again, with much beating of the wings,
fluttered down to the surface of the tank; this performance was
repeated again and again at intervals of some minutes. At first the
native could only make out that the cause of the commotion was a bird
of some kind, but after a few minutes, he, remaining crouched among
the reeds and bushes, saw distinctly that it was a cotton-teal, and
that each time it flopped into the water and rose again it left a
gosling behind it. The young ones were carried somehow in the feet,
but the parent bird seemed to find the carriage of its offspring no
easy matter; it flew with difficulty, and fell into the water with
considerable force.

August is the month in which some fortunate observer will one year be
able to confirm or refute this story.

The comb-duck or _nukta_ (_Sarcidiornis melanotus_), which looks more
like a freak of some domesticated breed than one of nature's own
creatures, makes, in July or August, a nest of grass and sticks in a
hole in a tree or in the fork of a stout branch. Sometimes disused
nests of other species are utilised. About a dozen eggs is the usual
number of the clutch, but Anderson once found a nest containing no
fewer than forty eggs.

The lesser whistling-teal (_Dendrocygna javanica_) usually builds its
nest in a hollow in a tree. Sometimes it makes use of the deserted
nursery of another species, and there are many cases on record of the
nest being on the ground