Little can be written on the subject of snipe which is not known to every sport-loving man who has been more than a few months in Ceylon, nevertheless a few words as to when and where snipe shooting may most easily be got may be useful to tyros and visitors to the Island.

The Ceylon snipe is the "pin-tailed snipe " gallinago stenura. It is called kaeswatuwa by the Sinhalese and kichân by the Tamils. The first snipe is usually seen late in August or early in September, but they are not numerous enough to be worth going after till some weeks later. The best shooting is obtainable during the wet months of December, January and February. Towards the end of the season they get plump and are then much less wild than on their arrival in the Island. By the middle of April they are as a rule all gone.

During the north-east monsoon snipe may be put up in every paddy-field, tank and swamp. They swarm in places where the soil contains in abundance the worms and insects on which they feed, congregating especially in freshly-ploughed fields. It is believed that they feed at night.

Large bags of from fifty to seventy couple to one gun, in one day, have not infrequently been made, most of them in the neighbourhood of Trincomalee. In spite of the thousands killed every year there is no reason to think that snipe are less numerous now than they were formerly.

In addition to the ordinary snipe, the '1 painted snipe " rhynchoea capensis, is also found. It can be distinguished at a glance by its handsomer plumage. It is a permanent resident, breeding in the Island, and is most numerous in the northern parts, where five or six couple have been shot in a day. As a rule, however, the proportion is about one "painted" to several hundred " pin-tailed" snipe shot. They are not easily flushed, and fly more slowly and with less zig-zagging than ordinary snipe, and usually drop suddenly into the paddy or sedge after going a short distance. They rarely utter any cry on rising. The little "jack-snipe" is also said to have been shot in the north of the Island.

Very pretty snipe-shooting may be obtained among the low bushes fringing fields and tanks in the low-country, where the birds lie up during the heat of the day. As they whirr out of the brush-wood, zig-zag off and dive down again a few yards off, they are very difficult to hit and afford excellent sport.

All that need be added is the warning that snipe-shooting in the low-country is about the most trying to the health of all forms of sport owing to the exposure to the sun, the glare affecting the eyes, the inhalation of noxious gases from the mud, the wetting of the legs and feet, and the temptation to over-much drinking, even of so mild a beverage as coconut milk.