MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 679 



itself as flat brown soil thickly sprinkled with the heather-like laana. The 

 noise of the birds awaking far off on the Dhandh is borne more and more 

 loudly to our ears, and meanwhile the geese are coming up in small groups 

 at first with long pauses between. They come in line or in inverted Vs, — 

 krouck-krouck. — Soon it is a case of larger flights ; battalion after battalion 

 advances upon the line occupied by the sportsmen ; and the guns are get- 

 ting busy. Now here, now there, a big mass leaves the line and comes 

 thumping down to the earth or else a wounded one is seen gradually to 

 sink below the line of his fellows, and come to ground slowly several 

 hundred yards away. They are either very plucky or very foolish birds. 

 One is rather inclined to think the latter, because true to the course 

 of their flight, they keep on coming by hundreds, heedless of the firing in 

 front of them. If any of the sportsmen find that their direction is chang- 

 ing, early in or in the middle of the shoot, he can easily move his hurdle, 

 place it across the new line of flight, kneel down behind it and recommence. 



The proper shooting lasts for about an hour, but it is quite worth the 

 while of the sportsman to wait behind his hurdle for three hours, because 

 there have been many instances of the geese coming from the Dhandh after 

 the shikaris have been called to pick up the dead birds. A gun which 

 happens to be in a good place may fire 70 cartridges any morning \ and at 

 the beginning of the shooting, you get some easy shots because the geese 

 fly fairly low and slowly as they approach their feeding ground. Later on 

 when a good deal of firing is going on, they come fairly high and fast, but 

 by no means out of (vertical) range. 



There are generally three or four different places which the geese visit 

 in the morning and one can do the shooting at each place in turn on con- 

 secutive days. But they do not seem to mind even if you shoot in the one 

 place for three days running. Whether different birds go out to sun 

 themselves each morning or whether *the same ones go to the same places 

 it is diflicult to say ; but the sportsman gets more or less the same amount 

 of shooting for three days in the one place. If four decent shots shoot for 

 three days they can easily get 300 geese. BB shot is advisable ; as is also 

 an aim well in advance for their flight is much speedier than it looks ; and 

 they can carry much shot, if not hit in the head or neck. It is interestino' 

 to take a canoe and paddle out on to the Dhandh later in the day. Crowds 

 of big kurunj will go wheeling off into the sky : huge flocks of big flamingoes 

 will stand at attention as you come into view round some mass of long 

 reeds, and then go running, scuttering and flapping away, long lines of 

 pink against the blue sky with a roar like a fast train rattling over a rail- 

 way bridge. Ducks paddle about in the long reaches, but are whirring ofl:' 

 before you can get near : and the droves of geese are more easily heard 

 than seen. It is a strange republic. 



VIJAIARAJJI. 

 48 



