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



to the beginning of March, being represented in larger numbers 

 than either the Woodcock or Wood Snipe." As, however, Scully 

 also says that the Woodcock " is not at all common in the 

 Valley and can only be obtained by hard work, " we need not 

 infer that the Solitary Snipe occurs in any great numbers. 



This bird is in all its ways far more a true snipe than is the 

 Wood Snipe and in flight and voice is very similar to the Fantail 

 and Pintail. On the wing it is strong and quick and it indulges j 

 in the same twists and turns as does the Pintail, rising with the 

 same loud "pench" as does that bird, though its voice is shriller 

 and louder, and its flight, perhaps, not so quick. 



Hume says " they do not seem to care much for cover. I have 

 constantly seen them along the margins of little streams, in bare 

 rocky ravines and valleys, where there were only small corners and 

 nooks of turf and mossy swamp, and no cover a foot high. I have, 

 no doubt, found them in small open swamps in the middle of 

 jungle, but they stick to the grass and low rushes, and I never 

 observed them in scrub or rinjal jungle. I have known Wood 

 Snipe and the Eastern Solitary Snipe flushed within a short 

 distance of each other ; but, as a rule, the Wood Snipe is to be 

 seen only in tiny swamps or morasses, partly or wholly sirrrounded 

 by thick cover — the Solitary Snipe in little swampy places on open, 

 grassy hill-sides or along the margins of rocky-bedded bare banked 

 streams." 



It however does sometimes actually frequent forest land, for one 

 shot by Major Wilson in Shillong was found in grass land more or 

 less covered with pine forest and the breeding male shot by myself 

 in North Oachar was put up out of bracken in oak forest, the trees 

 being quite close together and much matted and covered with 

 orchids and other parasites. 



Such records as I have of birds shot along the foot-hills of the 

 Himalayas seem to have been all obtained from grass bordering 

 patches of swamp, situated either at the bottoms of grassy hills or 

 else in comparatively open ravines. 



Major Wilson, writing to me about this snipe, says "I have only 

 killed about half a dozen of these in my time and all round about 

 Shillong. I found them in the same sort of around as the 



