130 GAME-BIRDS OP INDIA 



when the lakes dried up. " Eeid and others note that they are more 

 or less migratory in the Lucknow division ; and, doubtless, this local 

 migration obtains in many of the drier portions of N.W. Provinces, 

 Oudh and Rajputana. Hume thought that an excess water supply, 

 such as is found in Lower Bengal, also affected their movements ; 

 but this is probably not the case, as they have been shot, and are 

 common, at all seasons of the year in the Sundarbands, the most 

 watery of all parts, even of watery Bengal. 



Nowhere within its habitat is the Painted Snipe ever found in 

 such vast numbers as is the Common Snipe ; but in certain parts 

 of the country, such as the Sundarbands of Khulna and Jessore, 

 some thirty or forty birds may be seen in a day's trudge ; and 

 this although the birds do not pack in these districts as they are 

 said to do elsewhere. Thus in ' Stray Feathers ' Butler speaks 

 of whisps or flocks of twenty birds, and Hume in ' Game-Birds ' 

 records that he has seen flocks of a dozen or more birds together 

 at the same time. 



The Painted Snipe scarcely deserves a place amongst the game- 

 birds ; if in anatomy he is more near the sandpipers than the 

 snipe, in many of his habits and manners he is nearer the rails 

 than to either the sandpipers or real snipe. Hume, with his powers 

 of accurate observation, of course noticed this, and gives a very 

 characteristic little anecdote to illustrate it. He writes : — 



"On one occasion .... I saw three running about on 

 a tiny patch of short, close, moist turf, just outside the rushes and 

 not twenty yards from where I was, and picking up something rapidly 

 from the ground. After watching them for several minutes, I made 

 a slight clicking sound, and they instantly sneaked into cover with 

 lowered heads." 



I was once staying in a house in the garden hedge of which 

 a pair of white-breasted Water Rails had their nest. When all 

 was quiet, the two adult birds, and later on the parents with their 

 brood, used to come out and wander about on the lawn ; directly, 

 however, they found out that they were being watched, simulta- 

 neously down went the eight heads of parents and children, as if 

 suddenly filled with the deepest shame, and they all sneaked off into 

 the shelter of the hedge. If they were disturbed by a dog they 



