THE GAME BIRDS OF INDIA, BURMA AND CEYLON. 17 



off' with his tail spread like a turkey-cock's, awaiting developments. 

 "The dog worked up to the end of the marshy bit and knowing there 

 was a bird there, turned and came back towards me. 



" When the cock thought he was too close to be pleasant, he 

 again executed his manoeuvre of flying over the dog, and I distinctly 

 saw him use his beak to lever himself, as it were, into the air. This 

 time he pitched where I could not see him, and when he rose again 

 he evidently meant going, so I let fly and very nearly bagged an 

 old native woman in the next compound as well." 



In connection with this little piece of swamp the same writer has 

 commented on the regularity with which woodcock return year after 

 year to the same piece of ground. " I soon discovered that to find 

 woodcock with any certainty a good spaniel was required, as well as 

 an intimate knowledge of the ground, for one woodcock succeeds 

 another in a favourite spot, just as one trout succeeds another 

 behind a big stone in a burn at home, and in Shillong the places the 

 cock mostly frequent are few and far between. 



" This peculiarity of the bird I learnt before ever I came out to 

 this country, and it was well expressed a few days before I left home 

 by an old retainer of ours, who said ; ' Now, Mr. A., I may be deid 

 and gone afore ye come back, but ye'll mind the holly bush on the 

 brse abuve the kirk-yard. When the snaw's on the ground, it aye 

 bauds a woodcock, and a graand ane.* " 



Many a woodcock I shot there as a boy, and no doubt many a one 

 has been shot there since. So it is in Shillong. Each year the cock 

 arrive, their instinct brings them into the haunts their ancestors 

 frequented, though, alas, these haunts are getting fewer and fewei 

 as the station extends. 



" The unwillingness of the 'cock to leave a favourite spot, so long- 

 as any cover at all remains, is shewn by the fact that both last 

 season and the season before, I got an occasional bird within thirty 

 yards of my house, fifteen from a much-used foot-path, and about 

 fifty from some stables. This was a cosy little bit of covert in the 

 old days, before the gro und was so much built over. 



" There is a drain and slightly marshy bit of ground in the midst 

 of our .Regimental lines where the 'cock feed at night still, although 

 the barracks have been inhabited for close on forty years." 



In England, of course, cock shooting is indulged in under very 

 different circumstances and with very different results and I was 



