THE BLACK-TAILED GODWIT. 41f 
acres in extent. In the hot weather the water was reduced to 
about 18 inches in depth, and this place for the latter half of 
March used to swarm with these birds. From about 9 to 2 in 
the day, the whole of the birds used to go away somewhere, 
evidently to feed. They used to allow me to approach within 
eunshot, and on the report of a gun would fly to the other end 
of the “bhil,’ when they could not be so easily shot. By the 
beginning of April not a bird was to be seen.” 
They are very locally distributed ; in one part of a division or 
even district they may be very plentiful, in another quite scarce. 
Where plentiful, you will find them in flocks of from ten to a 
hundred or more, and then, as a rule, comparatively tame. 
Where scarce, you see them singly, in pairs, or in parties of 
three or four, and then they are generally shy, wary, difficult 
to circumvent, and fully deserving of the title, bestowed on them 
by our ancestors, of “ Goodwits.” 
Inland you more commonly find them about the margins of 
broads and swamps, (though even there it is not rare to find 
them on the banks of our larger rivers,) but towards the coast 
they chiefly affect the vast, sandy and muddy flats that charac- 
terize the estuaries of our larger rivers. 
Their habits vary a good deal according to season and 
locality. They feed largely, when this is available, on rice, both 
wild and cultivated. In India this is, to judge from many 
examinations I have made, their favourite food. But they 
also eat seeds of some of the millets, of grass, sedges, and the 
like, numbers of small insects, tiny shells, and occasionally 
worms and grubs, and soft-bodied crustacea. ‘Their diet, how- 
ever, depends upon what is available, and you may kill birds 
with their gizzards entirely crammed with any one of these, 
to the exclusion of the others. 
Where recently cut or nearly ripe rice fields are at hand, 
they feed in these, by day if they are little frequented, but 
by night if there liable to disturbance. Thus, while at some 
places you will find them standing the whole day in the grassy 
shallows of some broad, generally just outside the grass, or 
where it is very sparse and low, in others they leave these 
places entirely during the greater part of the day, and are only 
to be seen there in the mornings and evenings. In such cases 
you may generally (for they will, unless very much persecuted, 
visit the same places for weeks together) track them to their 
feeding grounds, often close at hand, rarely more than a couple 
of miles from the water they frequent. Such feeding grounds 
may be recently-cut rice fields, or nearly ripe standing rice, 
wild or cultivated, or very often stretches of spongy sward, inter- 
spersed with patches of low rush. But, though they generally have 
regular feeding grounds, which they visit for some hours once 
in the twenty-four hours, they also feed at other times, and 
you may see them stalking about in water, three to five inches 
