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



may find nothing but Pintail in his bag, whereas one shooting in 

 the same district in December may find but few Pintails and nearly 

 all Fantails. 



In Eastern India the Pintails arrive early in August, but there 

 are a few records of snipe being killed in July. Fasson writes in 

 epistola to Hume : "I have flushed snipe in the Hill jungle in 

 June ; and Jarbo, up at Rangamati in the Hill tracts, shot half a 

 dozen couple on the 31st July last." 



Those seen in June were probably birds which had been 

 wounded and therefore unable to migrate, whilst the occurrence of 

 the others in July must have been abnormally early. The record 

 of the first snipe to be shot each year in the Chittagong District 

 has been recorded by " Polity e " in the Indian Field of 9th July 

 1903 for the years since 1878, and according to this record the 

 next earliest dates to those mentioned by Fasson were on the 6th 

 August 1892 and 1st August 1886. Mr. Val Weston says that 

 the Pintail Snipe sometimes puts in an appearance in Birbhum in' 

 the last few days of July but does not seem to have shot any in 

 that month and such appearances must be unusual, for in 1903 

 he records the first snipe as being shot on the 23rd August. 



" Raoul " in the Indian Field of the 26th July 1909 records 

 having seen three snipes on the 20th of that month and again that 

 in 1873 he saw snipe on the 13th July; but these notices of 

 seeing snipe can hardly be taken into consideration as actual 

 records, for there is always the possibility of other little waders 

 having been taken for them. 



In Dibrugarh the first few birds arrive about the 4th August, in 

 Chittagong about the- same time, in Cachar, in Jalpaiguri and the 

 Himalayan Terai they arrive about the 1 2th of that month and in 

 Nepal a little later still. Thence they work South and West, 

 arriving in Ceylon in October, and seldom before the end of that 

 month in any numbers. 



The maps which accompany this article will show how the dis- 

 tribution of the Pintail and Fantail overlaps, as well as the approxi- 

 mate dates on which the earliest individuals of each species arrive 

 at their respective destinations. The routes are marked in red and 

 from these it will be seen that the Pintail seems to move more 



