GALLINAQO STENUKA 97 



is fcliat whilst yon often get botli birds in precisely the same gronnd, 

 you \Yill often find the Pintail apparently quite at home in dry grass- 

 land, stubbles and scrub jungle where the Common Snipe would 

 never, except accidentally, occur, and again you will find the Fantail 

 on almost bare mud banks of rivers and tanks, where it is the rarest 

 thing in the world to meet a Pintail." 



Personallj', I do not think that cover is so great a necessity to 

 the Pintail as Hume would suggest ; the fact is that a great part of 

 this bird's food consists of tiny shells, insects and other objects found 

 for the most part on dry land and not in water or mud ; accordingly 

 the bird frequents dry quite as frequently as wet land, naturally 

 preferring to get cover as well when that is possible. 



Mr. H. A. Hole found snipe (undoubtedly the Pintail) feeding in 

 absolutely bare ploughed fields in Cachar. I have myself shot them 

 in Dibrugarh in mustard fields, from which the crops had been cut, 

 and every year numerous birds are shot on the race-course of that 

 place on practically bare, but wet, grassland, the grass being but 

 an inch or two high. 



Mr. C. E. Milner, I.F.S., writing to me from Bassein in Lower 

 Burmah, says : — 



" Since February 10th I have been marching more or less along 

 the West Coast of Burmah in the Bassein district south of Arakan, 

 and lat. 17°, and I have seen a fair number of Pintail Snipe along 

 the foreshore. Between the shore and the hills or cultivation, there 

 is a strip of 50 or 100 yards of flat sand-bank covered with short 

 grass and with here and there a small slightly moist hollow, liut 

 there is no water and no mud except in the mangrove swamps or in 

 an occasional buffalo wallow. On March 22nd, marching along this 

 sandy shore, I put up several snipe and Golden Plover, and of the 

 former only one got up off the seaweed at high -water mark, the rest 

 got up and settled again on this dry sandy strip, although the sun 

 was very hot and there was practically no shade. I afterwards 

 bagged four couple out of one small buffalo wallow and altogether 

 there must have been between fifteen or twenty couple of snipe on 

 the fifteen miles or so of sandy shore. They were all Pintail and 

 quite plump, and quite as good to eat as snipe shot elsewhere at an>- 

 other time." 



In Bengal, the most common resort of both Pintail and Fantail 

 is paddy cultivation and shallow bJieel land which is covered with 

 vegetation of some kind, but whereas the Fantail never leaves this 



