PINTAIL SNIPE 79 



arrow sliot into the air, and tbe bleat came out as the dropping 

 arrow reached the ground. Both sexes bleat, and they make 

 this noise when alarmed as well as when courting. They also 

 have a double note vocally produced, but not while drumming. 

 Although in the breeding season snipe often perch on posts and 

 trees, the nest is, as one would expect, on the ground, and is 

 a very scanty affair; that Mr. Baker saw was composed of a 

 fine, curly, brown grass. The eggs are peg-top-shaped, of an 

 olive, drab, or brown colour, blotched with dark brown and 

 lavender, and just over an inch long; four is the full set; the 

 chicks run at once, and are mottled with light and dark brown 

 and peppered with silver-white. 



Snipe have many local names : Tihud or Pan-Iowa among 

 the Mahrattas; Khada-kiichi, in Bengal ; KcEsicatuica, in Ceylon ; 

 Mor-ulan in the Tamil and MukupurecU in the Telugu languages. 



Pintail Snipe. 



GaUmago stenura. Mijatj-woot, Burmese. 



The pintail snipe is so like the common or fantail snipe in 

 appearance, flight, and cry, that few people can distinguish it on 

 the wing, though, as Mr. E. C. Stuart Baker tells us, a friend of 

 his once won a wager with him by correctly referring to their 

 species ten snipe, six fantail and four pintail, as fast as he shot 

 them. When brought to book, however, they can be told apart 

 with one's eyes shut. If one takes the bill of a snipe, of the 

 ordinary type usually shot, in the thumb and fingers at the base, 

 and feels it down to the tip, a distinct, though slight, thickening 

 will be felt at the end in the case of a fantail, while in the pintail 

 the calibre is practically the same throughout. 



There is also a difference at the opposite end ; on parting the 

 soft feathers, or tail-coverts, which in snipe, as in most ducks, 

 partly conceal the short tail, and counting tbe tail-feathers, there 

 will be found on the fantail to be fourteen or sixteen in number, 

 and all much alike and of ordinary shape, though the two outer 

 are rather stiff and narrow — these are the " bleating " feathers, 

 as remarked in the last article. In the pintail, there are ten 



