FIRST LIST OF THE BIRDS OF THE SOUTH KONKAN. 11 



all the host rises simultaneously with frantic screams. You 

 send the intelligent boatman to pick up the bird, with parti- 

 cularly emphatic injunctions net to hold the creature by its 

 wings, and not to draggle it in the mud. After floundering 

 about the slush, and apparently having an exciting shikar 

 on his account after a wounded bird, he returns with a miser- 

 able specimen of H. garzetta, wildly clutching both wings 

 together with one hand, and with the other grabbing it 

 firmly by the neck. It is too dark to see anything more, and 

 you paddle back to the boat disgusted, with a lively sense 

 of the vanity of human wishes. The Wigeon are whistling 

 around you, and you hear them rise close ahead, but you can- 

 not see them, 



" For on the silent river 

 The floating star beams quiver, 

 And now, the saints deliver 



You from fleas." 



I have been too garrulous already, but the above is an 

 unvarnished picture of the sport you may expect on a Ratnagiri 

 tidal creek in the cold weather, and of the birds you may see, 

 except that you can only get Wigeon in any number on the 

 Vashishti. You might have varied your programme by landing 

 and shooting a few brace of Snipe; and if you had gone 

 up the steep scrubby slopes of the hills that overhang the 

 creek amongst the Corinda bushes ( Carissas corinda), you would 

 have flushed a few coveys of Perdicula asiatica, and if you 

 had hit on the right place might have got a Peacock, especially 

 if you had waited till he had gone to roost on the leafless 

 bough of some ghostly silk cotton tree, and had stalked him 

 through the thorny bushes and clinging undergrowth. You 

 would have seen plenty of Bulbuls and Rock Robins, and 

 several parties of Pyctoris sinensis, Malacocercus somervillii 

 Drymceca inornata, large flocks of Merops viridis, numerous 

 Honey-suckers and Ioras, and oue or two Magpies, Orioles 

 and Woodpeckers. In the gloaming you would have seen at 

 least two kinds of Goat-suckers, ( C. monticolus and asiaticus), 

 and would have heard the weird sigh of Ketupa ceylonensis 

 and the Huhii of Ascalaphia bengalensis ; and on a tall 

 mango you might have found a nest of Limncetus cirrhatus. 

 But I cannot mention any more possibilities without prema- 

 turely giving a catalogue of more than half the birds found 

 iu the district. 



Returning to the balloon, and once more looking all round, 

 you would see that coursing would be almost as hopeless an 

 amusement as pigsticking, that it would be dangerous to man 

 and beast, and cruel to dogs, not to mention hares and foxes. 



