346 THE PINTAIL SNIPE. 
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 difference between 
them is that, while the Pintail if unable to get both his require- 
ments will stick to grass and such-like cover, even if there be 
little perceptible moisture in the ground, the Common Snipe in 
such a case will stick to the wet ground, even though there be 
little perceptible cover there. The consequence is that, while 
you often get both birds in precisely the same ground, you 
will often find the Pintail apparently quite at home in dry 
grass lands, stubbles and scrub jungle, where the Common Snipe 
would never, except accidentally, occur, and again you 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. ; 
Of course, Iam well aware that, when much shot at and 
occasionally, but rarely, at other times, the Common Snipe will 
be found in dry cover some distance from water; but this is 
exceptional, whereas the Pintail is commonly and constantly 
flushed in such localities. 
If the bills of the two birds be carefully examined, I think 
that this difference in habit will be better understood. The 
Fantail has the end of the bill more or less spatulate, that is 
to say, dilated and widened out;and in the dry skin it will be 
seen that the terminal inch of the upper, and even a greater 
length of the lower mandible is closely pitted with small 
semi-circular cavities. These are not visible in the freshly- 
killed bird, because, in life, these cavities are all filled up with 
nervous matter—nerve knots terminating delicate thread nerves 
permeating the bill and leading up to and joining the brain. 
greater part of the basin had dried so as to expose the mud. Although the general 
average (including this day) is in these parts nearly 86 per cent. of Pintails to 14 
per cent. of Fantails, on this occasion I shot 75 per cent. of Fans to 25 per cent. 
of Pins! My bag was not a large one, but it consisted of nearly all the Snipe 
remaining at the above date. 
‘¢TI,—This year I was, with a companion, encamped from Ist to 4th February at 
a place in the Kadur district. We had only, on the evening of the Ist, time for a 
short stroll by the edge of a drying-up tank, and in the mud we killed three couple, 
all common. On Monday morning, 3rd, we were below a tank, some two miles off, 
in grass, where we got five couple, a// Pintail. In the evening got two couple more 
off the mud—all Fantail.”—Charles Mclnroy, Major. 
‘¢In the southern portions of the Peninsula, they chiefly affect swampy ground 
and young paddy fields; and when these become dry and cut, they keep to dry 
grass ground, with scrub jungle. I have frequently shot them in sugarcane fields 
by keeping outside and sending in men and dogs to make them rise””—A. Theobald. 
‘‘T have included under one head the Common and Pintailed species of 
Snipe; they are so very similar in general appearance that it is only by 
very close inspection one observes that they differ_at all one from the other.” 
—F H. Baldwin. : 
‘Its note is quite different from that of the Common Snipe, and the flight is 
rather slower and not so zig-zag. 
“During the heat of the day, and sometimes when much shot at, it settles 
in. dry tracts of jungle, some hundreds of yards from the water (1 have also 
seen this habit occasionally in the Common Snipe); and. in hot days I have 
found them in high crops, probably on account of the shade.”—W. £. Brooks, 
