THE GAME BIRDS OF INDIA, BURMA AND CEYLON. 593 



into the air similar to our G. scolapaci?ia, and describing large 

 circles above the spot where the female is sitting, it suddenly 

 dashes downwards with great noise (which is most likely produced 

 by the tail feathers, like that made by our species and somewhat 

 resembles the noise of a broken rocket). As the bird approaches 

 the ground, the noise increases until it has got within a hundred 

 yards, when it suddenly stops the sound and quietly flies on, utter- 

 ing a note sounding something like Uric, tiric, Uric. Courtship lasts 

 until the middle of June and is mostly heard or seen in the morn- 

 ings and evenings, but occasionally in the day-time and even at 

 night in the clear weather." 



I was fortunate enough to take an undoubtedly authentic nest of 

 this snipe on the 21st June 1890 at Guilang in the North Cachar 

 Hills. Some Nag-as brought me a pair of snipe, which they had 

 trapped in a wide ditch surrounding a deserted Stockade, and on a 

 search being made in the banks of this ditch a nest with four eggs 

 was discovered. The two birds appeared to be quite sound in every- 

 way , but it is almost certain that one of them must have received 

 some injury which prevented it migrating to its usual nesting- 

 ground though it had left the plains with the intention of going- 

 there. 



The bottom of the ditch in which the nest was placed contained 

 a little water, but the banks were only slightly moist and spongy 

 and where the nest was placed in amongst the roots of long grass, it 

 was quite dry. The nest was a circular pad of fine roots and grass- 

 es with a depression in the centre of about half an inch. It was 

 curiously well and compactly put together, though there was no 

 attempt to weave or intertwist together the articles of which it 

 was composed. 



The eggs, which were fresh, were four in number and averaged 

 1-48" x 1-12". The ground colour is a very pale, but rather right 

 yellow stone, and the markings consist of very bold blotches and 

 spots with one or two long scriggiy lines of deep Vandyke brown. 

 These are nearly all confined to the larger third of each egg, only a 

 few spots and specks being present in the smaller two-thirds, The 

 underlying marks consist of blotches of purplish grey scattered 

 about the egg in the same proportion as the primary markings. 



