382 BIRDS OF BRITISH BURMAH. 



Bill fleshy brownish green for two thirds its length from the base,, 

 remainder horny brown ; iris very dark brown ; legs and feet brownish 

 green. 



Length 10'5 inches,, tail 2'4, wing 5, tarsus 1-2, bill from gape 2'3. The 

 female is of about the same size. 



The Common Snipe of Europe is fairly abundant throughout Pegu, 

 Arrakan and the northern half of Tenasserim ; further south it becomes 

 rare, and in the Malay Peninsula it can be considered only a straggler. 



It inhabits the whole of Europe and a considerable portion of North 

 Africa, and it extends over the whole continent of Asia down to Ceylon on 

 the one hand and to China on the other. It ranges to the Philippine 

 Islands, and must necessarily occur in Siam and Cochin China ; but it has 

 not yet been recorded from these countries, where doubtless it is very 

 rare. 



This species and the next are likely to be confounded unless special 

 attention is paid to the differences between them. 



The first and most unfailing point of difference is in the tail. In 

 G. ccelestis the tail is composed of twelve, fourteen or sixteen ordinary soft 

 feathers ; in G. stenura there are ten soft feathers and on either side of 

 these a number, varying from five to nine, of narrow rigid feathers with 

 apparently no webs. These narrow feathers require to be looked for; they 

 do not strike the eye, as they are more or less hidden by the tail-coverts 

 and are moreover very close together. A second point of difference lies 

 in the coloration of the lower surface of the wing. In the Pintail Snipe 

 the axillaries and the under wing-coverts are very distinctly and regularly 

 barred with dark brown throughout. In the Common Snipe these same 

 parts are indistinctly barred, and there is always a patch on the coverts 

 left quite white and unbarred. Mr. Hume points out one or two additional 

 differences which it may be well to quote : in the Common Snipe the outer 

 web of the first primary is white or nearly so, and the secondaries are 

 broadly tipped with white ; in the Pintail the outer web of the first primary 

 is of the same colour as the inner, and the secondaries are only margined 

 with albescent or brownish white. In the two birds the bills vary in 

 shape, that of the Common Snipe being dilated at the tip and furnished 

 with very numerous pores, whereas the bill of the Pintail is not dilated at 

 the tip and there are comparatively few pores. 



The Common Snipe arrives rather later than the next species, and few 

 birds are shot before the end of September. It leaves Burmah about the 

 end of March, but it is difficult to state the exact date. 



This Snipe is almost invariably found in swamps and paddy-fields, places 

 where the water is shallow and patches of mud show up at frequent inter- 

 vals. Fields where the paddy is eight inches or a foot high and the water 

 partially dried up, as is the case in October, are favourite Snipe-ground ; 



