NOTES ON BIRDS OF QUETTA. 53 



tremendous pace, faster even than the Imperial, and during their 

 wheels in the air showed a clear white expanse of underwing. 

 They were endeavoUriug to settle to feed, hut were persistently 

 bullied by the ravens, and obliged to move on. I was thus enabled 

 to get a couple of good specimens as they came over me. I could 

 not find out that the Sand Grouse up there had any fixed drinking 

 place, as in Cutch and Sind : probably there was too much water 

 about, and they drank wherever the fancy seized them. 



I saw part of the skin of a Sand Grouse shot by a Warrant Officer 

 of the Garrison, which, I think, must have belonged to P. UcJifen- 

 steinii, which does not seem to have been recorded from S. Afghan- 

 istan before. A fair number of Woodcock [3. rusticola) were shot 

 in or about Quetta this last winter. The first fell to my lot on 

 November 11 (rather an early date for them), and the same day I 

 saw two others. The exact number that were shot in the season 

 I have no account of, but I should say between twenty or thirty. 

 I heard of one man shooting as mauy as sis in one day, but accounts 

 of shikar must be received with caution. They invariably come in 

 about the beginning of December, that is, the main body of them, 

 and either move on or get exterminated ; anyhow, they are not 

 often seen after January. There were one or two favourite spots for 

 them, but as often as not they were put up out of small gardens, 

 and I even heard of one having been knocked over wirh a stone by 

 a Tommy in the cemetery a year or two before. 



There were three Solitary Snipe (G. soliinria) shot this last 

 season, all in the Surkab, Pisheen, a broad strip of marsh and tama- 

 risk bushes, between two ranges of hills. Unfortunately I could not 

 succeed in getting hold of a skin for preserving before they had been 

 plucked. In the same place was procured a single specimen of the 

 English Water Kail (B. aquaHcus), which I do not see recorded in 

 Col. Swinhoe's list of the birds of S. Afghanistan. 



Chukor (0. chvhar) and See-see {Ammojperdix Bonhami) are the 

 other items which help to make up the scanty bags, generally made 

 within a radius of fifteen miles of Quetta. By all accounts the last 

 severe winter killed off a great number of these birds, so that now 

 they are comparatively scarce. The See-see is extraordinarily fond 

 of his own particular spot of ground, and you may rely upon finding 

 him there time after time. As the winter advances, however, they 

 disappear somewhere, where, I could never satisfactorily make out, 

 but probably into lower lying country. About the migration I 



