SNIPE-SHOOTING. n 



joyed our iced claret and soda and our cheroots. We 

 compared bags and found we had both done pretty 

 well. Each of us had shot one or two specimens of 

 the lovely painted snipe. Though this bird is in 

 appearance a snipe, it is really, as its habits and 

 flavour when cooked prove, a species of plover. 

 Besides these birds, the paddy-fields hold numbers of 

 white paddy-birds, plovers (known locally from their 

 cry as " did-he-do-its "), snippets, golden orioles, 

 kingfishers, and barbets of lovely colours, looking like 

 animated jewels when on the wing. In crossing a 

 drier bit quails sometimes rise, some of them being 

 specimens of the tiny though delicious and prettily 

 coloured " button-quail," no bigger than a man's 

 thumb. Here and there one meets lizards, or rather 

 iguanas, of gigantic size and loathsome appearance, 

 which express their displeasure at one's intrusion by 

 loud hissing. They are, however, harmless. Not so 

 the snakes, at least not all of them, but these are 

 fortunately not so frequent as stay-at-home readers 

 might suppose. 



After breakfast we worked large tracts where there 

 were fewer birds, and the heat was decidedly trying. 

 As a consequence, however, birds lay closer, and we 

 worked steadily on till the cool of evening caused 

 them to rise more readily. I began, too, to discover 

 my cartridges were drawing to an end, and as I was 

 shooting w r ith a twenty bore, I could hope for no help 

 from E , who had a twelve. Towards dusk I 

 took to picking my shots, so that every cartridge might 

 tell towards the total. At last the lot were finished 



