THE TANKS AND TANK SHOOTING 



a week-end with our mutual friend E. R. M'Donnell of 

 the Irrigation Department, and on the Sunday morning 

 we travelled in M'Donnell's cart 3 miles to a nice tank 

 with some paddy fields under it. We tackled the paddy 

 fields first for snipe, but did not find very many ; going 

 down the fields and up again, M'Donnell and I, however, 

 accounting for ten or twelve couple, Bell not being a 

 snipe-shooter. This only took about an hour, so we then 

 adjourned to the tank, which was a fair-sized one, too big 

 to be well worked by only three guns. However, Bell 

 and M'Donnell posted themselves under some dead trees, 

 out in the water about thigh deep, whilst I and two 

 natives set off to wade round the sedge to put the birds 

 up. Picture to yourself a peaceful expanse of water about 

 a mile long and half a mile wide, surrounded by forest, 

 a thick fringe of sedge, lotus, and reeds round the edge ; 

 here and there, in the open water, parties of the lesser 

 cormorants and a few darters, whilst nearer the sedge may 

 be seen little flocks of teal, and overhead the attendant 

 eagles, hawks, and kites, whilst there is the never-ending 

 movement of parties of teal, grebes, cormorants, and other 

 birds flying from place to place. What a change takes 

 place at my first shot ! With a perfect roar of wings up 

 get scores of whistling-teal uttering their sibilant whistle ; 

 flocks of the little goose-teal flash past with their peculiar, 

 rather guttural, twittering cry ; huge cranes and herons 

 rise and fly away as hurriedly as their usual deliberate 

 movements will allow them, the grey herons uttering 

 their hoarse " crake-crake " as they go ; sand-pipers dart 

 about all over with their shrill calls ; the lapwing hovers 

 around with his irritating " did-he-do-it " cry, and multi- 

 tudes of other birds too numerous to mention. I am 

 sorry to note in all this riot that the whistlers are flying 



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