However, after having been well scraped, you start again, and
if you are fortunate and know your ground well, or have a
shikaree who does, and knows when to look for the birds—for
these Snipe, though found about the body of the swamp, in the
morning and afternoon, generally retire during the day, (unless
it is cloudy) to the edge of the shola which usually heads
every swamp, or to the cover of the andromcda bushes which
fringe its edges—you may succeed in bagging half a dozen
couple ; and if you are not solely intent on the long bills, may
have added a couple of Hares, a brace of Spur Fowl, a few
Bush Quail, and perhaps even a Grey Jungle Cock, to the bag.
"Snipe shooting on the Nflgiris is generally accomplished
with the aid of beaters, more or less numerous according to
taste and resources, and perhaps a few dogs ; but a very effective
and very economical way—and one to which the swamps about
Ooty arc particularly adapted—is to have, say only two men, and
twenty or thirty yards of rope, about the thickness of a lead
pencil. To the rope should be attached, at distances of two or
three feet, tags about a foot long of white cloth. On coming to a
swamp, one man goes to cither side, each holding one end of the
rope which they drag over the swamp, occasionally flapping it
up and down. If the swamp is a narrow one you skirt it; if a
broad one, you walk down the middle, but in cither case a few feet
behind the rope, and you will thus obtain a good many shots.
"When disturbed, the Pintail will, on being flushed, often
settle on grassy hill-sides far away from water, or take refuge
in a shola, and often, when they first come in, they will alight
on bare hills where they will remain the whole day."
Again, I may quote my friend Mr. Vidal's remarks on Snipeshooting
in the Southern Koiikan, though these apply equally to
both species :—
"Snipe-shooting in Ratnagiri can seldom be had before the
first or second week in November, after the monsoon rice has
been harvested. Even then the birds arc so scattered and
uncertain in their choice of grounds that a great deal of heavy
walking is necessary to get a moderate bag. The best grounds
are the low-lying kharvat rice fields, on the banks of the tidal
creeks, and reclaimed from the salt water, by earthen embankments.
But in shooting over such grounds it is well, if possible,
to choose your time so as to have two or three hours of the
highest tide. For all round the paddy fields are acres and acres
of mud swamps with stunted thorny bushes, in which many of
the birds He at low tide until they are driven up to the fields
by the flood. These mud swamps, intersected by numerous
deep channels, and full of pit-falls and sticky black slush, are
too nasty walking to tempt even the most enthusiastic sportsman.
But as the Snipes themselves are driven from these
pestilent strongholds by the tide, there is happily no necessity
to venture into them.
" The best Snipe-shooting is to be had near the coast in the
vicinity of the large rivers ; but inland there are many snug
little grounds formed by terraced rice fields at the foot of
the hills, and here and there a low-lying tank, where the monsoon
water, rapidly receding, leaves an oozy bed of rushes and
sedge, where a few Pintails are always at home. December
and January are the best months for Snipe-shooting, as by that
time the superfluous rain water has all evaporated, and the
birds are concentrated in all their regular legitimate haunts,
whereas earlier in the season the area of wet ground is
so large that there is no knowing where to look for them."
All Snipe seem to affect particular spots ; there may be
fifty localities within a radius of a few miles, all, so far as any
human being can judge, equally likely to attract the birds, and
yet in practice there always prove to be two or three corners
possessing such irresistible attractions for them that year after
year, and week after week, whether the other likely spots are
blank or not, tltey are sure to contain Snipe if there be any in
the country. There used to be, and probably is still, a small
swampy pond on the road-side, between Maipuri and Bhongaon,
a trumpery little place skirting a much frequented high road,
to which one year, that I was detained in the station, I drove
every morning, but Sundays, during the greater portion of
November and December, and where I each day killed every
Snipe on the pool, from two to, I think, on one occasion six
couple without once finding less than four birds. These were
Common Snipe, but I know that the same precisely is the case
with Pintails ; and Mr. Fasson alludes to an instance of this
kind in Chittagong. He says : " There is a tank near Chukurea,
by the road side, which we have frequently noticed as
alzvays containing a couple of Snipe. I and others have, during
the past three years, gone by that road some fifteen or twenty
times, and have never failed to shoot a Snipe in that tank, sometimes
a couple, and have always found it re-occupied even if we
visited it again the next day. It is a smallish tank with low,
reedy grass edges, in which edges the Snipe lie."
Davison writes to me of a curious trait observed by him of
this species, which, so far as I am aware, has never been noticed
in the case of the Common Snipe. He says; "At Klang,
in the Sclangore District, (Malay Peninsula) I noticed that the
Snipe (G. sthenura) instead of remaining in the paddy flats and
other similar low-lying places (which they frequented during the
day) all resorted for the night to two comparatively elevated spots.
One, and the favorite one apparently, was a grassy tract lying
between the Klang fort at the top of the first rise of the hill,
and the Resident's house which is a little higher up. This bit of
ground was very dry and covered with a short, stiff, turf grass.
The birds, as soon as it began to get dark (which was soon after
6 P.M.), began to arrive from all directions, singly, in couples,
w I