26 GAME-BIEDS OF INDIA 



taking the deep bracken lying just inside the oak trees. We have only 

 gone some hundred yards when we walk into the birds, which have 

 scattered a little, and four are added to our bag. I have one shot and 

 a miss at the partridge, but as I fire I catch a glimpse of what I am 

 sure is a woodcock which gets up and flits through the trees to my right, 

 but on saying so I am merely laughed at for my pains, as the cock are 

 not supposed to be in. I, however, insist on beating back through the 

 spinney on my own account, and hardly have I got well inside when 

 two cock are up and off before I am ready for them. Within five 

 paces, however, another gets up and falls to my shot, and as he falls 

 another rises and is missed. Before I can load the spaniels have 

 another bird in the air, and by the time I have walked the spinney 

 through, five birds have been dropped, and at least as many more 

 missed. After this the other guns come up, and after inspecting my 

 bag it is at once decided that a large flight must have just come in and 

 that the original day's shoot should be abandoned for the purpose of 

 hunting up the most likely places for the cock. 



Their favourite haunts along these coasts are the numerous small 

 copses and spinneys which nestle in between the hills, sometimes 

 running a little way up the sides, often surrounded by a fringe of 

 light scrub or gorse and nearly always with a tiny stream trickling 

 down the centre and losing itself in the swamp at the foot. We 

 soon come to one of these little woods and arrange to work it from 

 the bottom upwards, one gun taking the centre and the other two 

 the edges. As the guest I am given the best place in the centre, 

 but before we get into the wood itself two cock are put up from 

 the bracken at the edge of the swamp and are downed with a pretty 

 right and left by my host. No more birds are seen until we are 

 well inside the cover, when a single bird gets up from the mossy 

 bed of the tiny stream just in front of me and is promptly bowled 

 over. A second gets up within a few yards, but I miss badly and 

 the bird jinks away to my right, and I hear the bang, bang of H., 

 gun No. 3, a good shot who has doubtless accounted for him. 



For some time I get no more shots, only putting up one bird which 

 flops out of my sight before I have time to take a snapshot at him. 

 The birds seem to be lying up in the holly bushes and gorse on the 

 edge of the copse, and both my neighbours are getting repeated shots, 



