THE WOOD-SNIPE. 327 
feet, and I do not know that it is ever found much, if at all, 
above 10,000 feet. 
It is so scarce and so accidentally met with that it is 
impossible to say when exactly it migrates ; but I cannot learn 
that it has been killed either on the Nilgiris or in the Sub- 
Himalayan tracts earlier than the 1st of November. But 
Damant shot one in Manipur on the 14th of September, and 
{ have a specimen killed in the Khasi Hills a little later in 
September. Perhaps these eastern birds are not migrants from 
the Himalayas at all, but breed in some of the hills there. 
I have never seen two birds of this species within a quarter of 
a mile of each other ; and though, having seen comparatively so 
few, this goes for little, every sportsman I have consulted tells 
me the same thing, v7z., that, except in the breeding season, when 
on rare occasions a pair have been flushed together, it is quite 
unusual to meet with more than a single bird in the same place. 
When down in the plains country their habits seem to be 
different to what they are in the Himalayas, Nilgiris, &c. 
Damant mentions (note p. 326) that he shot five from the howdah 
in one morning, and the following remarks by Captain Baldwin 
show that in the plains they become at times gregarious :— 
“T have known,” he says, “old sportsmen who have shot 
all over the country, and have not seen, much less killed, one 
of these birds. I have twice been fortunate enough to meet 
with this Snipe: once near the foot of the Himalayas I flushed 
one from the corner of a marshy pool, but so suddenly that 
I was unprepared, and before I could get my gun up he was 
gone. I did not see another xemoricola for many years, till 
when shooting in the Philibhit District in January 1872, I 
came across not one, but over a dozen of these birds ; they 
were close to one another. I was with my brother-in-law at 
the time ; we had gone out one morning to shoot Snipe from 
off the back of a pair of elephants we had with us, each in a 
howdah. The marsh was covered with a very high kind of 
rush, so that it would have been impossible to see sufficiently 
well to shoot on foot. 
“We soon put up several Common Snipe, and presently my 
companion fired at one, and I then saw a large dark bird, 
which I thought at the time was a solitary Snipe, rise with a 
croak, and after curving about, drop close by. We went up, 
and not one, but three rose—two of which fell to our shots. 
We soon found several more, and nine were killed altogether ; 
they offered the easiest of shots, and did not rise till the ele- 
phants were close on them. They were particularly fine gamey 
birds, and proved most excellent for the table.” 
They affect tiny swamps and morasses, on the hill sides or 
in narrow valleys, but only those close to, or surrounded by, 
tree or high bush or ringal jungle, and in which there is at least 
some small patch of good cover of rushes, bushes, or the like. 
