Gallinago nemoricola, Hodgson.
Vernacular ITaiass.—[Ban-chaha, Nepal ]
VERYWTIERE, in the better known portions at any
rate of the Empire, even in those localities it regularly
visits, a scarce bird, the distribution of the Wood-
Snipe is still most imperfectly known.
In the Himalayas, its home, I only know for
certain of its occurrence from near Dalhousie on
the west to Native Sikhim on the cast. Adams does
not include it in his Kashmir list,* though he knew the bird
and recorded having killed it further cast in the Himalayas ; and I
have never yet seen a Kashmir-killed specimen. Very possibly
however it may straggle into the realm of the Happy Valley,
I can only record that, thus far, this is " not proven." On
the other hand it must be rare in both British and Native
Sikhim, and in the Terai below these. During ten years in
which he collected in these localities in the most exhaustive
manner, (obtaining numbers of birds previously fabulously rare,
indeed every species ever thence recorded by any one else,)
the late Mr. Mandelli only once obtained the Wood Snipe there,
when it was brought in to him along with four nests of its eggs,
his men having discovered a breeding colony of it in a locality
in the interior which they had not before visited.
In the winter, it occurs (though everywhere very sparsely
distributed) in the Kangra Valley, in the Dun, and in the northeast
of the Saharunpore district in the Siwaliks.
It has been shot in the Kumaon Bhabur two or three times.
I had one specimen sent me from a place 40 miles north-west
* Though Adams does not include it in his Kashmir list, he speaks of it as
follows in his Punjab and North-West Himalayan list :—
'• In the lonely glens by die side of some mountain stream, where the pine
grows tall and dense, and the sun's rays rarely penetrate, there we meet the solitary
Snipe {G. nemoricola] from the lowest range of the Himalayas to the limits of forest."
On the other hand in his Kashmir list he does include G. solitaria, which we
independently know to occur there.
Colonel Irby says that he " saw several couples of this fine Snipe at Moonsheyaree
in Kumaon, at an elevation of about 6.000 or 7,000 feet in May 1859 Those
T found were in little rushy patches of bog on the sides of hills, never on streams."