birds, and three or four (never more) young ones. But I have
occasionally seen a dozen or more birds, all apparently adults, in
the same patch of cover ; and since Captain Butler drew attention
to the matter, I have repeatedly seen similar parties, consisting
entirely of young birds of both sexes, all of course in the
plumage of the male, though in some few of the females signs
of the coming adult plumage were appearing.
Painted Snipe, as a rule, lie close and require some hustling
to flush them, at least, if met with in the good cover
they chiefly affect. Sometimes you may find them in thin
stuff, such as satisfies the Common Snipe, and then I have
known them rise on your approaching within twenty yards.
But, as a rule, it is only when you begin to trample through the
patch in which they arc for the time living that they rise, and
I have found them occasionally quite as hard to put up as any
Jack. They seem very tame or stupid birds. You may flush
them week after week out of the same patch in your quest for
Pintails or other snipe, but so long as the spot continues to their
liking, they steadily cling to it; and even if, as of late years in
view to settling certain questions to be discussed further on
I have had to do, you shoot several of the party, following them
about to effect this, the remainder are "all there" the next week
just as if a gun had never been fired.
They rise silently according to my experience, but I am told
that occasionally (I presume during the breeding season) the
females utter their characteristic low note when suddenly
flushed. The flight is comparatively slow, laboured, and with
irregular flappings, and a good deal resembles that of
some of the Rails, especially in the way they sometimes
hang their legs. They fly low, and soon drop again into
cover; but if fired at and missed, or possibly just touched
with a grain or two of shot, they sometimes give a little
shoot into the air, and put on a spurt, carrying them
double the distance they usually go. If the patch into which
they drop is small, you will find them much where they
dropped, for in daylight they rarely cross the open, even" when
undisturbed, and never, I think, when alarmed ; but if foitune
favours them, and they reach a good bed of rushes, they will
often make tracks through this in a regular Rail-like fashion, and
you may find them fifty yards or more further on.
I said that in the daytime they rarely cross the open, but on
one occasion, when lying up in a bed of bulrushes trying to
circumvent an Osprey that was hunting about, I saw three
running about on a tiny patch of short, close, moist turf just
outside the rushes, and not twenty yards from where I was, and
picking up something rapidly from the ground. After watching
them for several minutes, I made a slight clicking sound,
and they instantly sneaked into the cover with lowered heads.
In this action, and in their mode of moving about, they rcmindcd
me far more of Rails than of Snipe, and certainly alike in all
their ways, and even in their note, there is much that recalls
the Rails.
Their cry, heard only I believe (but am not certain) when they
are breeding, is a single, low, rather deep note, which Wood-
Mason calls "a low, regular hoarse, but rich purr," and Ticket]
describes as " low and mellow, a single soft note frequently
repeated, kone, kone, konc," but which, to my ears, most resembles
the sound produced by blowing into the neck of a phial. I have
heard no second sound, and thought this was produced by both
sexes, as two birds are continually heard answering each other ;
but Mr. Wood-Mason's investigations have shown that the females
in this as in the Australian form (though apparently to a much
less extent) differ from the males in having a more developed
windpipe, with a large convolution just where it enters the body,
to which development the peculiar call referred to may be assumed
to be due. Hence it was probable that the females only would
utter it, and Mr. Mason states, as a matter of fact, that, amongst
captive birds while the females continually thus called, the males
only jerked out a sharp squeak at irregular intervals, and then
only apparently in answer to the females.
This squeak of the male I have never heard in the field, but
the call now proved to be that of the female I have often
heard, most commonly Ín the morning, not unfrequently towards
dusk, and occasionally, but rarely, during the day.
In Southern India the natives call it the "Peacock Snippet," and
certainly, when standing at bay, with the breast lowered to the
ground, the back raised and tail expanded, and the head with upturned
bill surrounded by the spread wings brought round so as
almost to meet in front, they present a very striking and beautiful
picture ; and I cannot but believe that, during the nuptial
season, the birds nautch, as natives assert, in some such position
opposite each other.
They certainly move about (and probably feed) much more
at night than by day. They are very fond apparently of running
at night, just as Rails do, along the small, turf-clothcd ridges
dividing paddy fields, and numbers are caught in horse-hair nooses
set along these, together with Porzana fusea and maruetta.
About their food I regret to say that I can only speak from
memory. I kept an exact record of the contents of the
stomachs of over fifty specimens, but this is not forthcoming
now just when it is required. I remember that insects and
tiny Crustacea and shells, land and water, predominated, and
that there were also grubs and caterpillars, and some admixture
of vegetable matter ; but I have also an idea that I repeatedly
noticed grain and seeds of sedges and grass in their crops. Of
this latter I cannot now be sure, but I find that Hodgson notes
finding both rice and fragments of mustard seeds in their
gizzards, so that my remembrance is probably correct.
A 2