214 STALK A SURROW. 



rowed plumes. When the fair was over the lenders demanded 

 back their feathers, but their wearer, being much pleased with 

 himself, objected to returning them. Upon this, the lenders 

 snatched for their feathers, and in the scuffle the poor bor- 

 rower was stripped, not only of them, but of most of his own 

 as well. So this modest little bird has ever since been left 

 lamenting its fate, and striving to hide its nakedness, which, 

 they say, accounts for its mournful notes and its being so 

 seldom seen. Often as I have endeavoured to catch a glimpse 

 of this shy wee bird, by trying to follow it up when it com- 

 menced its piping notes at dusk, strange to say I always 

 failed to discover it. 



The commencement of our trip had been decidedly au- 

 spicious, and during the three following days I got some 

 pretty shooting at the gooral in this neighbourhood, killing 

 three more. One of them, however, which I wounded late in 

 the evening, had been much torn by the eagles and vultures 

 before what little they had left of it was eventually found by 

 a goat-herd, whose attention had probably been attracted to 

 it by the birds gyrating and swooping above it. 



On the fourth day we shifted our tents a few miles, to a 

 ridge that overlooked the Boon stretching away like a big 

 green map far below. Early in the morning, whilst search- 

 ing for game with my shikaree along a circuitous route 

 towards our new camp, I noticed, away on the sky-line, the 

 dark form of an animal which the glass showed to be a 

 surrow. "We waited until it moved out of sight beyond the 

 steep-sloping ridge on which it had been standing, and then 

 made the best of our way there. We were clambering round 

 the rocky shoulder of the ridge, when I caught sight of the 

 animal a short distance below me, but having got wind of us 

 in some manner, it rattled away down the rocks, and before 

 I could cover it with the rifle, was out of sight in a deep 

 wooded " khud " l immediately beneath. 



1 "Khud," or "khalla," is the native term for a steep-sided, V-shaped 



