STRAY FEATHERS. 



Vol. IX.] AUGUST 1880. [Nos. 1 & 2.**? 



$mt list 4 ito Itrda of tfo gtauth lotto. 



By G. W. Vidal. 



It appears to be the orthodox custom that each contributor of 

 a paper to Stray Feathers should commence by offering profuse 

 apologies for its incompleteness and imperfections ; should 

 deplore all his sins of omission and commission ; should dis- 

 claim all knowledge of his subject ; deprecate all criticism ; and, 

 finally, in a paroxysm of modest confusion, throw the entire 

 responsibility of his work on the devoted head of the Editor, 

 without whose assistance and unremitting reminders, &c, &c, 

 it never could have seen the light. All this goes without the 

 saying, and in my case may be taken for granted. 



No account of the birds of the particular tract I am about 

 to describe has, as far as I know, ever been published, excepting 

 a chapter on the Ratnagiri species that I have lately contributed 

 to the Bombay Provincial Gazetteer. Mr. Fairbank collected for 

 a few weeks on the eastern frontier of Savant Vadi,* but 

 he does not appear to have gone over the Ratnagiri Frontier 

 intermediate between Mahableshwar and Savant Vadi. 



I have known the South Konkan Districts for seven years, 

 having been stationed at Ratnagiri from 1869 to 1873, and 

 again from 1877 to the present date. During the first period 

 I made, from an ornithological point of view, little or no use of 

 my time. I shot various birds — Waders, Scratchers and Swim- 

 mers — which I had good reason to believe from experience and 

 the teachings of veteran epicureans to be " aves sapidissimce in 

 patina" I also collected numerous ornate and bright-coloured 

 specimens to be set up in England. I was invariably accom- 

 panied in my annual wanderings by Dr. Jerdon, as personified 

 in his '' Birds of India," and many an hour have I spent with 

 his help in laboriously and often vainly trying to identify some 

 non-familiar species. But I should as soon have thought in 

 those days of shooting and seriously examining a Drymceca or 

 a Phylloscopus as of throwing stones at my grandmother. For 

 the last three seasons only have I systematically collected all 

 specimens, pretty or plain, clothed with bright silks or stuffs 



* Vide S. F., IV., 250, et seq. 



