THE BlkDS OF SINGAPORE ISLAND 
fiocks, is about the most numerous, or rather most conspicuous, 
of the local waders. Along the shore whimbrel are quite 
common in the winter months: the curlew is much less 
nomcroiis. Readers familiar with shore-birds at home will 
also recognise that noisy bird the redshank and perhaps detect 
the call notes of other well-known fowl of the mud-flats such 
as the tumstone, grey-plover, greenshank and the two god wits. 
None of these birds of course breed in the country and in some 
cases they are very slightly different in plumage from the 
European birds. 
There is one wading-bird however to which we must pay 
some attention and that is the subject of one of our plates^ the 
pintail snipe. GaU'maga sthemtra (berkek: tetirokj. The plate 
is quite accurate enough to enable us to dispense with a 
lengthy description: suffice it to say that the sexes differ but 
little in appearance, that the length runs from 9i to il inches 
and that the wing measures about 5 inches. The average 
weight is given by Hume as 3,91 0Z5. 
The snipe is of course a migratory bird not breeding in 
Malaya. The breeding grounds are in Xorth-east Asia and 
the birds come south in the winter to South-east Asia including 
India and the Malay Peninsula where they are, in season, very 
common and in certain districts provide very good sport, 
Kelham has published such an excellent account of the pintail 
as a Malayan bird and knew so much more about snipe than 
we do ourselves that there is no need for an apology in quoting 
him at length : — '^Although the European Snipe is occasionally 
found, the one commonly met with in the Malay States is the 
Pintail Snipe, dozens (I think 1 may say hundreds) of it being 
obtained for one of the former. But in general appearance 
the two species are so alike that anybody not a naturalist, nor 
of a very inquiring nature, may easily shoot throughout a 
whole season in that land of the longbills, Province Wellesjey, 
without knowing that his spoils differs in the least from the 
well-known Snipe of the British Isles. 
'*But if. while resting from his labours after a few hours' 
plodding through mud and water under the blazing sun oF 
those parts, he will turn out his well-filled bag and carefully 
examine its contents it will be found that, with hardly an 
exception, the birds are ''Pintails". 
