"Now we flew away far from the lakes for a while in quest of harvest fields. There the swifts fell on the insects that flew about newly mown grain, and devoured them. I, too, ate to repletion of the grain, though not of the insects. While sitting on the fence of a rice field I heard someone hitting something. It sounded very much like a chaffinch cracking open a cherry stone with his beak in order to get at its kernel. (Isn't it strange that a little bird's beak has the power of a nutcracker?) But, when I wandered nearer the place, under the fence, whence the noise was coming, I found another bird--a Himalayan thrush. He was engaged not in cracking cherry stones, but in hitting a slowly moving snail with his beak. Tick, tack; tick, tack--tack! He hammered on and on until the snail was stunned into stillness. The thrush raised his head and looked around, poised himself on tiptoe, opened his wings, took a quick aim and struck three more blows--tack, tack, tack! The shell broke open, revealing a delicious snail. He lifted it up with his beak, which was bleeding slightly; apparently he had opened his mouth too wide and hurt its corners. After balancing the snail correctly in his grasp, he flew up and vanished into a tree where his mate was waiting for supper. "The rest of our journey through the grain fields of Sikkim was uneventful. The only thing that is worth remembering was the trapping of peacocks by men in the forests. These birds come to the hot southern marshes in quest of food and warmth when the snakes and other creatures whom they eat go into winter quarters in the north.