File:The game-birds of India, Burma and Ceylon (1921) (14564854579).jpg

Identifier: gamebirdsofindia02bake (find matches)
Title: The game-birds of India, Burma and Ceylon
Year: 1921 (1920s)
Authors: Baker, E. C. Stuart (Edward Charles Stuart), 1864-1944
Subjects: Birds Game and game-birds
Publisher: London, Bombay Natural History Society
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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n to a considerable depth, covers these spaces,but by October and November they are practically dry, and even inthe rains there are nearly always portions which are a little abovewater level. The Pintail Snipe shelter and feed in these grasslands,keeping almost entirely to the drier portions, though if the rightkind of food is present, they also frequent the wet patches and themarshy bits which are dotted about over the whole of the area.Hume remarks on the feeding ground of the Fantail and Pintail asfollows :— Both the Pintail and Fantail affect cover and moist ground, sothat where both these luxuries exist, you will continually flush bothspecies at the same spot; but the difference between them is that,while the Pintail, if unable to get both his requirements, will stick tograss and such-like cover, even if there he little perceptible moisturein the ground, the Common Snipe in such case will stick to the wetground even if there be little parceptible cover there. The consequence a.
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GALLINAQO STENUKA 97 is fcliat whilst yon often get botli birds in precisely the same gronnd,you \Yill often find the Pintail apparently quite at home in dry grass-land, stubbles and scrub jungle where the Common Snipe wouldnever, except accidentally, occur, and again you will find the Fantailon almost bare mud banks of rivers and tanks, where it is the rarestthing in the world to meet a Pintail. Personallj, I do not think that cover is so great a necessity tothe Pintail as Hume would suggest; the fact is that a great part ofthis birds food consists of tiny shells, insects and other objects foundfor the most part on dry land and not in water or mud ; accordinglythe bird frequents dry quite as frequently as wet land, naturallypreferring to get cover as well when that is possible. Mr. H. A. Hole found snipe (undoubtedly the Pintail) feeding inabsolutely bare ploughed fields in Cachar. I have myself shot themin Dibrugarh in mustard fields, from which the crops had been cut,and every year

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