380 
BIRDS OF BRITISH BURMAH. 
tlie Province only in the winter months. I have generally seen it in small 
flocks of four or five individuals on the banks of the larger rivers and 
creeks^ but it also frequents marshes and paddy-fields. It feeds in the 
water or on its edges^ picking up small insects from the mud with its long 
bill. In breeds in various parts of India and Ceylon in June and July^ 
laying four eggs either on the bare ground or in a nest made of a few 
pieces of grass ; the eggs are buff blotched with black. 
H. leucocephalus , from the Australian region^ has the whole head white 
and the hind neck black ; otherwise it resembles H. candidus. 
Genus SCOLOPAX, Briss. 
726. SCOLOPAX RUSTICULA, 
THE WOODCOCK. 
Scolopax rusticola, Linn. Syst. Nat. i. p. 243 ; Je^^d. B. Ind. ii. p. 670 ; Beavan, 
Ibis, 1868, p. 391 ; Bl. B. Btirm. p. 157 ; Anders. S. F. iii. p. 356 ; Dresser, 
Birds Eur. vii. p. 615, pi. ; Hume ^ Dav. 8. F. vi. p. 458 ; Hume, S. F. viii. 
p. 112 ; Bingham, 8. F. viii. p. 196 ; 8cully, 8. F. viii. p. 353 ; Hume ^ Marsh, 
Game Birds, iii. p. 311, pi. Scolopax rusticula, David et Oust. Ois. Chine, 
p. 475 ; Legge, Birds Ceylon, p. 806 ; Gates, 8. F. x. p. 238. 
Description. — Male and female. Forehead and cheeks white mottled with 
brown ; a broad brown stripe from the gape to the eye and another 
narrower one from the hinder part of the cheeks to the nape ; crown and 
nape crossed by three broad bands of black and two of ochraceous 
chestnut ; upper plumage and wing- coverts a mixture of rufous^ grey and 
brown, the scapulars and back also blotched with deep black ; tail black 
with small rufous notches on the outer webs^ the tips broadly ashy ; quills 
brown^ notched on the edge of both webs with rufous ; chin and throat 
whitish ; the whole under plumage pale ruf escent grey narrowly cross- 
barred with brown ; the under tail-coverts also streaked with black ; the 
lower throat and sides of the neck tinged with deep chestnut. 
Bill dull flesh-colour, becoming dark brown towards the tip ; legs dull 
greyish flesh-colour or flesh-brown ; iris blackish brown. [Dresser.) 
Length about 14 inches^ tail 3"5^ wing 7 to 8_, tarsus 1*4^ bill from gape 
about 3*5. The female is rather larger than the male. 
The Woodcock occurs in Burmah in the winter months^ but is rare and 
seldom met with. It seems rather commoner near Tonghoo than elsewhere 
in the Province, for I heard of a gentleman at that station having killed 
seven birds in one morning. This is, I imagine, an unusual circumstance. 
