File:Indian sporting birds (1915) (14747419121).jpg

Identifier: indiansportingbi00finn (find matches)
Title: Indian sporting birds
Year: 1915 (1910s)
Authors: Finn, Frank, 1868-1932 Hume, Allan Octavian, 1829-1912 Marshall, Charles Henry Tilson, 1841-
Subjects: Birds -- India Game and game-birds -- India
Publisher: London : Francis Edwards
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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wn ; the shape also is quiteordinary. The food of the wood-snipe consists rather of insectsthan of worms, and curiously enough of small black seeds also;it is itself a particularly good bird for the table, if not of muchimportance as an object of sport. Woodcock. Scolopax rusticola. Sinititar, Hindustani. Plenty of good sportsmen have never shot or even seen awoodcock, just as Tickell says was his case, his first impressionsof the bird, in Nepal, being as follows: Imagining from thegeneral resemblance of the two birds that a woodcock must flylike a snipe, I was much taken aback, when hailed to look out,at perceiving what appeared like a large bat coming with awavering, flagging flight along the little lane-like opening of thewood where I was posted ; but in an instant, ere I had made upmy mind to fire, the apparition made a dart to one side, toppedthe bordering thicket, and seemed to fall like a stone into thecovert beyond. When this queerly behaving bird is brought to bag, it is seen
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WOODCOCK 91 to be indeed like a snipe in the very long straight bill, overshotat the tip, and the peculiarly far-back position of the eyes, seento perfection in this bird, in which they are very large ; but thebird is as big as a good pigeon, and pigeon-like in its shortnessof leg and absence of bare skin above the hock, while the plump-ness and short tail rather suggest a duck, and the broad wingssufficiently explain the un-snipe-like flight. The mottled brownplumage, though very characteristic when one knows it, hasnothing to catch the eye at first sight, except perhaps the threebroad black bands across the back of the head, which are thepeculiar coat-of-arms of all true woodcock. It is worth while going into these details about so well knowna bird, for Blanford says black-tailed godwits were sold in theCalcutta Bazaar as woodcock, and though this was not so in mytime, it shows that many people did not know this valuedsporting bird and table delicacy by sight; for though this godwit

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