FIRST LIST OF THE BIRDS OF THE SOUTH KONKAN. 7 



When the shades of evening are falling, a happy thought strikes 

 you. You will get that cranky little canoe launched with an 

 outrigger tied on to make it steady, and with one man to paddle, 

 and another to do nothing. You will take your gun, and steal 

 up the lagoons on the sides of the creek through forests of man- 

 groves and rushes, and expect, at every wind of its wriggling 

 course, to put up a flock of Teal, Wigeon or Pintails. You 

 recline in the bows with your guu resting on the gunwale, and 

 despite all previous disappointments, you contrive to feel a 

 glow of gentle excitement. 



"Man never is, but always to be, blest." All of a sud- 

 den the paddle stops. The boatman points mysteriously 

 behind a bed of rushes, not twenty yards a head. He thinks 

 you don't grasp the situation fully, and proceeds to explain in 

 a hoarse stage whisper, " Sahib, badak hai !" in tones loud 

 enough to disturb all the birds within half a mile. If he was 

 within reach, you would kick him, but as he isn't, you can 

 only shake your fist, and look unutterable things at him. 

 Luckily, as yet, his indiscreet croaking has not alarmed the 

 duck. By emphatic signs you make him turn the boat close 

 in shore, and proceed cautiously yard by yard. You speculate 

 on the strength of the flock and the number of birds you 

 will drop to each barrel. You come nearer and nearer to the 

 high sedge, and strain your eyes to see what lies behind. You 

 are there, but no duck has yet risen or uttered a quack of 

 alarm. You rise slowly to peer over the heads of the rushes, 

 and decide rapidly that you will have a sitting shot with your 

 first, and a blaze into the brown with your second, when up 

 rise a couple of Pond Herons with a jeering " quawk," and 

 there is that fool of a boatman dancing and gesticulating with 

 a grin of triumph on his face, and shouting " Maro ! maro ! I" 

 like a fiend, and plainly expressing by his looks that he thinks 

 you are an incomprehensible duffer for not shooting them. This 

 is a damper. Of course there were no Duck, and you resign 

 yourself to your fate with whatever composure you can. It is 

 useless to argue, and you give the wretch a look of withering 

 contempt, and go on as before. There is still half an hour of 

 daylight, and after all there may be Duck ahead. You see a 

 flock of Golden Plover on the mud banks, and you let them 

 pass. A Blue Heron rises stiffly fifty yards ahead, followed 

 by a Green Bittern, and a party of Whimbrel, and a trio of 

 noisy Greenshanks. You surprise a party of Cormorants, larking 

 in the water, and bobbing up and down like a lot of charity 

 school children having their annual dip in the sea at Margate. 

 A flock of White Ibis are grazing in the sedge, well within 

 shot. Egrets, Sandpipers and Kingfishers are everywhere, but 



