ASSAM, SYLHET AND CACHAR. 45 



it is an utterly unmistakable bird. However I missed it some- 

 how, and never again saw it in Manipur, so some may hold it 

 doubtful, the more so that I have as yet no record of its 

 occurrence from any part of Assam, Cachar or Sylhet. 



[Not uncommon in Dibrugarh in suitable localities. When 

 once a person has handled one of these birds, he can never 

 mistake for them any others he may see in the forests, their 

 lovely plumage being so conspicuous. They keep exclusively 

 to deep dark forests, where they find their prey in the small 

 rivulets and pools in just the same spots as Geyx tridactylus, 

 They are permanent residents, and once when travelling through 

 dense forest I saw one of these birds fly out of a nest hole in 

 a tree about 20 feet off the ground. Their call is loud, like 

 that of P. gurial. They eat grasshoppers and beetles as well 

 as fish. A male shot 2nd June, 1881, measured: — Length, 

 10*40 ; expanse, 16"25 ; tail, 280 ; wing, 4'45 ; tarsus, 063 ; 

 bill from gape, 2'53 ; weight, 260ozs. Bill bright lobster red, 

 irides bluish grey, legs and feet vermilion, eyelids brick 

 red.— J. R. C] 



I have it both from the Sikhim Terai and the Bhutan Dooars 

 and many parts of Tenasserim, and it occurs in E. Pegu. 



Godwin- Austen obtained 130. — H. pileata, Bodd., somewhere, 

 I gather, in the Eastern Naga hills just north of Manipur, 

 and this will doubtless also be found here,* the more so that it 

 occurs in Tipperah, Chittagong, Arakan, Northern and South- 

 ern Pegu and the central and southern portions of Tenas- 

 serim. But except the specimen obtained by Godwin- Austen 

 I have no record as yet of its occurrence in any part of Assam, 

 Sylhet or Cachar. 



133.— Geyx tridactylus, Pall. 



I saw this species two or three times in both Eastern and 

 Western hills, and shot one specimen below Tankool Hoong- 

 doong, about the most northerly point I reached in the East- 

 ern hills. I found this a most difficult bird to shoot, as it flies 

 with great rapidity in the narrow, overhung, crooked, twisting, 

 rock-bound streams in which I invariably found it ; it was usually 

 out of sight before it was possible to raise the gun. One day 

 crawling about in the brushwood after a noisy Fomatorhinus 

 (that I never succeeded in getting, though its note became 

 perfectly familiar to all of us) I chanced to spy one sitting near 

 the end of a bare bough overhanging the stream about 30 

 yards below me and shot it before it saw me. It was quite 

 dead, but hung to the bough, one of the feet having somehow 



* At the same time its normal station is a zone extending some 50 miles 

 inland from the sea coast. 



