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During the rains water, often to a considerable depth, covers these 

 spaces, but by October and November they are practically dry, and 

 even in the rains there are nearly always portions which are a little 

 above water level. The Pintail Snipe shelter and feed in these 

 grass lands, keeping almost entirely to the drier portions though, 

 if the right kind of food is present, they also frequent the wet 

 patches and the marshy bits which are dotted about over the whole 

 of its area. Hume remarks on the feeding grounds of the Fantail 

 and Pintail as follows: — " Both the Pintail and Fantail affect cover 

 and moist ground so that where both these luxuries exist, you 

 will continually flush both species at the same spot ; but the diffe- 

 rence between them is that, while the Pintail, if unable to get both 

 his requirements, will stick to grass and such like cover, even if 

 there be little perceptible moisture in the ground, the common snipe 

 in such case will stick to the wet ground even if there be little 

 perceptible cover there. The consequence is that whilst you 

 often get both birds in precisely the same ground, you will often 

 find the Pintail apparently quite at home in dry grass land, stubbles 

 and scrub jungle where the common snipe would never, except 

 accidentally, occur, and again you will find the Fantail on almost 

 bare mud banks of rivers and tanks, where it is the rarest thing in 

 the world to meet a Pintail.'' 



Personally I do not think that cover is so great a necessity to 

 the Pintail as Hume would suggest ; the fact is that a great part of 

 this bird's food consists of tiny shells, insects and other objects 

 found for the most part on dry land and not in water or mud ; 

 accordingly the bird frequents dry quite as frequently as wet land, 

 naturally preferring to get cover as well when that is possible. 



Mr. H. A. Hole found snipe (undoubtedly the Pintail) feeding 

 in absolutely bare ploughed fields in Cachar. I have myself shot 

 them in Dibrugai'h in mustard fields, from which the crops had 

 been cut, and every year numerous birds are shot in the race 

 course of that place on practically bare, but wet, grass land, the 

 grass being but an inch or two high. 



In Bengal, the most common resort of both Pintail and Fantail 

 is paddy cultivation and shallow bheel land which is covered with 

 vegetation of some kind, but whereas the Fantail never leaves this 



