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



soon as it began to get hot I hunted about for the birds and 

 eventually found that after 10 a.m. they all retired to jute and 

 other high crops, generally resting near the edges of the field, but 

 often being flushed from the very centre. Once inside crops of 

 this sort the birds lie very close and one can almost stamp on them 

 before they move and, even when forced to fly, they do so in a very 

 lethargic manner and soon re-settle. On one occasion in the 

 middle of a hot day in September an orderly of my father's 

 actually caught a snipe in his hand, stooping down and picking it 

 up as we passed along in line. The bird seemed to be uninjured 

 and flew away well and strongly as soon as released. On another 

 occasion I caught a snipe I had seen settle by throwing my sola 

 topee over it, but was punished for my smartness by an erratic- 

 firing friend who promptly blew to pieces the topee together with 

 its fluttering captive. 



Snipe seem to differ curiously in different provinces as to the 

 haunts they prefer. Throughout Bengal one is accustomed to walk 

 them up in the rice fields and though, of course, they also haunt 

 shallow swamps and j heels as well, it is undoubtedly in the rice 

 fields that five out of every six snipe are annually shot. In the 

 Sunderbands we found that our biggest bags were obtained in the 

 middle of the day in the big jheels of deep water, where we had to 

 wade in any depth from our knees to our chests. The snipe got 

 up close to us and appeared in most cases to have been resting 

 under the big lily leaves which covered the whole surface of the 

 water. 



In Assam it is little use working the rice fields, though on rare 

 occasions decent bags may be- obtained in them. Generally the 

 birds are found in weed covered lagoons and jungle fringed tanks 

 where walking is hard and the shooting difficult. In many places 

 in Assam there are wide stretches of water covered with dense 

 masses of floating weed, strong enough to support one for a 

 brief second, yet hardly thick enough to allow one to stand and 

 shoot. In such places I have seen birds so numerous that to get 

 bags of 200 couple all that was required was straight powder 

 which, needless to say, was never to be found when shooting in 

 ground of this description. 



