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COLLECTING WAYS AND COLLECTING DAY'S, 



BY 



Colonel C. T. Bingham, Forest Dept., Burma. 



II.— THE LIMESTONE ROCKS. 



{Read before the Bombay Natural History Society on 2nd April, 1895.) 



The mist hung heavy on the water, but from where I sat at the 

 edge of the marsh, I could see the dawn breaking behind it. Great 

 shafts of light, at first pale and dim, then glowing deep red, began to 

 pierce the thick haze. Before this light had come, in the murky 

 gloom a couple of little egrets (Herodias garzetta), unaware of my 

 proximity, had alighted almost at my feet, looming so large that 

 I had at first taken them for their distant cousin the Jabiru {Xenorhyn- 

 chus asiaticus). Carelessly they stalked about in the shallow water 

 peering into it for their morning meal. 



From the centre of the marsh, where the fog lay heaviest, came a 

 deafening uproar of quacking, whistling and piping, with the flutter 

 of many wings beating the water, and the whirring rush of the flocks 

 of teal as they rose and swept away to their feeding grounds. I sat 

 listening trying to make out the calls of the different birds as they 

 came in a babble of sounds to my ear. The hoarse grating clang 

 of the comb-duck or nuckta [Sarcidiorius melanonotus), the " gra-aa-ak" 

 of the cotton teal, and the plaintive clear shrill whistle of the red 

 teal (Dendrocygna javanica) were easily distinguishable. From the 

 far side of the marsh the purple coots (Porphyrio) were calling loudly, 

 sandpipers were whistling, and the swirling wild cry of the curlew 

 rang pleasantly over the water, calling up far-away memories of 

 solitary rambles by a wild rocky shore in the west of Ireland, where 

 over the cliff stretched a wide expanse of barren heath and bog-land, 

 and in the far distance nestling among trees on rising ground lay my 

 home among cottages thatched and picturesque in their old fashion- 

 ed way. A curlew was the first bird I ever shot, and though it is 

 close on forty years ago, that exciting stalk is never to be forgotten. 

 How I wriggled and crept and made my way, with infinite pains and 

 to the great detriment of my clothes, from rock to rock along the wet 

 sand on my stomach, until I got within shot. How, panting more 

 from the excitement than the exertion I had gone through, I tried to 



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