24 GAME-BIRDS OF INDIA 



velvety corners, there seems no single spot in the neighbourhood 

 where they can possibly feed : and again in clumps of low scrub in 

 a treeless opening where some stream debouching in a clayey basin 

 converts this into a mossy swamp, through which its movements 

 are to be detected only at the further end where, as if ashamed of 

 its late sluggishness, it gushes out to resume its late brawling 

 descent. But, swamp or stream, the water must be moving to please 

 the Woodcock, and though there are exceptions to this rule, you 

 will generally hunt in vain mountain swamps and tarns, where there 

 is no outlet and the water is stagnant, though all the surroundings 

 and adjuncts be everything, apparently, the breast of Woodcock can 

 desire. In England we find them beside little stagnant ditches and 

 pools in coverts : but in India I have seldom so seen them, having 

 almost always flushed them in the neighbourhood of running water." 



In the Khasia Hills they undoubtedly generally affect places 

 within easy reach of running water, but this is possibly because in 

 these hills it is difficult to get away from it and they certainly some- 

 times lie up in small patches of swamp which are not directly con- 

 nected with any running water for some distance. Thus, until it 

 was eventually drained, a Woodcock could always be put up in a 

 tiny patch of swamp not fifty yards by twenty which was at the 

 bottom of my garden in Shillong. I never allowed a gun to be 

 fired here, and the birds soon became curiously tame, never rising 

 until one was within a very few yards of where they squatted. 

 Colonel Harington also records that four birds were shot and others 

 seen in the Government House Gardens inside the Fort, Mandalay, 

 in the early part of 1911. 



Colonel Wilson has recorded a similar instance in his own 

 compound. 



" Speaking of the little place in my garden, it is a bit of rushy 

 swamp, about 20 yards long and 10 wide. On one side of it is open 

 grass, and on the other a bank on which grow some brackens, bushes, 

 and about a dozen pine trees. Early one morning, I let the dog into 

 it, and a Woodcock jumped up almost at once, flew over the dog, 

 and pitched on the grass where he squatted about 5 yards off with 

 his tail spread like a Turkeycock's, awaiting developments. The 

 dog worked up to the end of the marshy bit and knowing there was 

 a bird there turned and came back towards me. 



" When the cock thought he was too close to be pleasant, he 

 again executed his manoeuvre of flying over the dog, and I distinctly 



