16 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XX. 



all favourable, one is pretty sure of flushing a dozen or so in the 

 course of a day in the favourite haunts." 



Hume writing of these favourite haunts thus describes them : 

 " Cover and running water are what in India the woodcock most 

 affects ; you may find them alike in the middle of deep forest or 

 thick Ringal jungle near the banks of some rushing hill streamlet, 

 foaming and sparkling in its rushy bed, where save a few tiny 

 velvety corners, there seems no single spot in the neighbourhood 

 where they can possibly feed ; and again in clumps of low scrub in a 

 treeless opening where sonie stream debouching in a clayey basin 

 converts this into a mossy swamp, through which its movement is to 

 be detected only at the further end where, as if ashamed of its late 

 sluggishness, it gushes out to resume its late brawling descent. But, 

 swamp or stream, the water must be moving to please the Woodcock: 

 and though there are exceptions to this rule, you will generally hunt 

 in vain mountain swamps and tarns, where there is no outlet and the 

 water is stagnant, though all the surroundings and adjuncts be 

 everything, apparently, the breast of woodcock can desire. Jn 

 England we find them beside little stagnant ditches and pools in 

 covers ; but in India I have seldom so seen them, having almost 

 always flushed them in the neighbourhood of running water." 



In the Khasia Hills they undoubtedly generally affect places 

 within easy reach of running water, but this is possibly becau.se in 

 these hills it is difficult to get away from it. They certainly some- 

 times lie up in small patches of swamp which are not directly con- 

 nected with any running water for some distance. Thus, until this 

 year when the whole patch was cleared, a woodcock could always 

 be put up in a tiny patch of swamp not 50 yards by 20 which is at 

 the bottom of my garden. I never allowed a gun to be fired here 

 and the birds soon became curiously tame never rising until one was 

 within a very few yards of where they squatted. Major Wilson has 

 recorded a similar instance in his own compound. " Speaking of 

 the little place in my garden it is a bit of rushy swamp, about twenty 

 yards long and ten wide. On one side of it is open grass, and on the 

 other a bank on which grow some brackens, bushes, and about a 

 dozen pine trees. Early one morning, I let the dog into it, and a 

 woodcock jumped up almost at once, flew over the dog, and pitched on 

 the grass about five yards from me, where he squatted about five yards 



