SCOLOPAX EUSTICOLA 23 



the cock down to the lower levels in greater numbers than usual. 

 It had been a very severe winter all through and birds of various 

 species were driven down below their usual winter haunts ; I 

 remember seeing Merula cdhicincta and M. castanea at the very foot 

 of the hills on several occasions that year. Bhim Tal, where I shot 

 these cock, is at an elevation of about 5,000 feet, and the Woodcock 

 ground there was a long straggling nullah running far above three 

 miles between the lakes and wherever there was suitable cover it 

 really seemed quite full of cock on this occasion ; I saw five birds 

 get up all at once from a little swampy field and got a nice right 

 and left, ahvays an event with cock. Eventually I got no less than 

 twenty-two cock that day and thirteen the next over pretty nearly 

 the same ground. Some of the birds, though by no means all, were 

 in very poor condition, showing they had had a bad time before 

 reaching the lower hills, and it would seem that many of our Hima- 

 layan birds may be almost residents, only moving to lower levels 

 when winter comes on. 



I never saw anything like the same number of cock in India 

 either before or since this occasion, and in something like twenty 

 years' shooting eleven was the greatest number I ever got in a day at 

 any other time, but I have never shot in the Neilgherries where I 

 daresay this bag has often been exceeded. At the time these birds 

 were shot this nullah was excellent cover for cock, a small stream 

 ran down it, and its sides were bushy with scattered trees and 

 occasional swampy patches and a little rice cultivation adjacent, but 

 alas ! drainage and clearing ruined it some years after this from a 

 sporting point of view and it was not worth the trouble of a visit 

 the last few years I was in India." 



Colonel A. B. Dew shot nine cock in one day round Gor on the 

 right bank of the Indus between Bungi and Chilas, and Major H. L. 

 Haughton informs me that they are nearly always to be found there 

 in fair if not large numbers. 



In the hills of Southern India they appear to have decreased 

 greatly of late years, for Captain Lambton writes that while in the 

 early sixties a single gun had been known to bag 250 cock in one 

 season, in 1910 a sportsman would be considered lucky to bag between 

 forty and fifty, 



Hume writing of their favourite haunts thus describes them : 



" Cover and running water are what in India the Woodcock most 

 affects ; you may find them alike in the middle of deep forest or 

 thick Eingal jungle near the banks of some rushing hill streamlet, 

 foaming and sparkling in its rushy bed, where save a few tiny 



