am not sure that he could distinguish between this and the
representative eastern species, which would be the one most
likely to occur at Dibrugarh, and neither Godwin-Austen, nor
any of his or my collectors, have yet procured it anywhere
in Assam, Sylhet, or Cachar, nor, though I found it not rare
about Dacca, has it been sent or recorded from Tippcrah or
Chittagong. Blyth notes it from Arakan, but I have seen no
specimen thence. In Lower Pegu It is found, Oates says, on all
the tidal rivers, and is particularly common about the mouths
of the Sitang. Ramsay, however, says that he only once saw
the bird in Burma, and in all our collecting in Tenasserim we
only once met with a single bird, and that near Moulmein. It
has never been procured at the Andamans or Nicobars,
Outside our limits, in the Malay Peninsula, China, Chinese
Tibet, Mongolia, Southern and Eastern Siberia, it is replaced by
the smaller eastern representative species (of which more anon)
L . mclamtroidcSy Gould. Neither species occurs, so far as we
know, in Eastern Turkestan, but in Western Turkestan the present
species has been observed on passage, and some may breed
there. It has been procured at Cabul and Kandahar, in
Beluchistan, in Persia, on the Caspian, near Shiraz, and at the
mouths of the Euphrates. Again, it has been sent from Mesopotamia,
and occurs in Asia Minor and on the coast of Palestine
and throughout Northern Africa from Abyssinia to Morocco.
Though extending rarely within the Arctic Circle, it occurs
on passage or as a summer or winter visitant, in most parts of
Europe, including the Islands of the Mediterranean, the Canaries,
the Faeroes and Iceland, and has twice been recorded from
Greenland.
IN THE plains of Upper India, the earliest date on which I have
ever shot the Black-tailed Godwit, is the 5th of October, and
the latest the 9th April. But, as a rule, it is quite the end of
October before they are well in, and almost all have left by the
close of March. In Nepal Hodgson notes that they " arrive
in flocks of from ten to fifteen from the north in September, and
then feed in the newly cut rice fields. They stay about a month.
Ere they depart, they have separated into pairs, and then often
stray into the later uncut rice. They return in March and April,
mostly in pairs, but usually only remain for a few days then as
the valley is too dry."
These birds must come from Northern and Western Siberia,
where the species occurs, and it will doubtless hereafter prove
to occur in Eastern Turkestan also, on passage.
In Lower Bengal they arrive about the end of October and
leave towards the close of March. Writing from Farfdpur,
Cripps says :—
" To the south of my factory was a large expanse of paddy
field, in the centre of which was a sheet of water of about 2 0
acres in extent. In the hot weather the water was reduced to
about 1 8 inches in depth, and this place for the latter half of
March used to swarm with these birds. From about 9 to 2 in
the day, the whole of the birds used to go away somewhere,
evidently to feed. They used to allow me to approach within
gunshot, and on the report of a gun would fly to the other end
of the " bhil," when they could not be so easily shot. By the
beginning of April not a bird was to be seen."
They are very locally distributed ; in one part of a division or
even district they may be very plentiful, in another quite scarce.
Where plentiful, you will find them in flocks of from ten to a
hundred or more, and then, as a rule, comparatively tame.
Where scarce, you see them singly, in pairs, or in parties of
three or four, and then they are generally shy, wary, difficult
to circumvent, and fully deserving of the title, bestowed on them
by our ancestors, of " Goodwits."
Inland you more commonly find them about the margins of
broads and swamps, (though even there it is not rare to find
them on the banks of our larger rivers,) but towards the coast
they chiefly affect the vast, sandy and muddy flats that characterize
the estuaries of our larger rivers.
Their habits vary a good deal according to season and
locality. They feed largely, when this is available, on rice, both
wild and cultivated. In India this is, to judge from many
examinations I have made, their favourite food. But they
also eat seeds of some of the millets, of grass, sedges, and the
like, numbers of small insects, tiny shells, and occasionally
worms and grubs, and soft-bodied crustácea. Their diet, however,
depends upon what is available, and you may kill birds
with their gizzards entirely crammed with any one of these,
to the exclusion of the others.
Where recently cut or nearly ripe rice fields are at hand,
they feed in these, by day if they are little frequented, but
by night if there liable to disturbance. Thus, while at some
places you will find them standing the whole day in the grassy
shallows of some broad, generally just outside the grass, or
where it is very sparse and low, in others they leave these
places entirely during the greater part of the day, and are only
to be seen there in the mornings and evenings. In such cases
you may generally (for they will, unless very much persecuted,
visit the same places for weeks together) track them to their
feeding grounds, often close at hand, rarely more than a couple
of miles from the water they frequent. Such feeding grounds
may be recently-cut rice fields, or nearly ripe standing rice,
wild or cultivated, or very often stretches of spongy sward, interspersed
with patches of low rush. But, though they generally have
regular feeding grounds, which they visit for some hours once
in the twenty-four hours, they also feed at other times, and
you may see them stalking about in water, three to five inches