GALLINAGO STENUBA 101 



feather to show. Y. the cautious man, had had thirty shots to twelve 

 dead birds, and I myself, shooting at everything within range, got 

 eighteen birds to sixty-five cartridges. After a short rest we tramped 

 on once more, but C, after loosing off another forty cartridges or so 

 and bagging one bird, fell into a buffalo wallow up to his neck, 

 and on being extricated from this struck work and cleared off. Y. 

 and I persevered after we had lunched, but with no better results 

 until we struck a piece of good walking, and here Y. collected five 

 birds in seven shots, and I was so fortunate as to get eight consecutive 

 kills. Then we got into deeper stuff again, and the average kills per 

 cartridge again dropped. Eventually, after the most exhausting day's 

 shooting I have ever had, we struck work at about 4 p.m. and totted 

 up our bags. C. had, before ceasing, fired eighty-three shots for one 

 bird, Y. who had picked his shots all day, had got forty-four birds in 

 exactly 100 cartridges, and I had managed to collect sixty-eight snipe 

 in 204 shots, but of these sixty-eight, two I had shot before we 

 started working the deep water, and eight I had got without a miss 

 on a clean piece of walking, so that really I had expended 194 

 cartridges in killing fifty-eight snipe. It was no question of want 

 of birds or of bad shooting as far as Y. or myself were concerned, it 

 was just the difficult walking and perhaps, to some extent, the 

 attendant exhaustion. Each step one took, one was sinking more or 

 less slowly the whole time, with the consequence that the gunner 

 was twice in every three shots under his birds. 



The following day we abandoned the deep water altogether, and 

 Y. and I worked round the edges and then across shallow stretches 

 linking one swamp with another. In this way, although we did 

 not put up one-tenth the number of birds we had on the previous 

 day, we managed between us to pick up over fifty couple in under 

 200 cartridges. 



The supposed differences between the Fantail and the Pintail in 

 the matter of flight and voice have been much discussed, but I am 

 ashamed to say that to this day I cannot tell one from the other when 

 on the wing, nor could I ever, with any certainty, say what the bird 

 was from its cry. 



Other sportsmen and field naturalists, however, seem to find 

 no difficulty in discriminating between them. Hume gives his own 

 opinion as follows : — 



