Wilson's snipe. 187 



by which it is characterized, as any one may satisfy himself 

 by hearkening to the very different low buzz made by the 

 wings of the Humming Bird. In this instance, as well as 

 in the former, all my sporting acquaintance were familiar 

 with this quivering call, but had never decided upon its 

 author.* At the same time, probably instigated by anger 

 and jealousy, I observed flying high and rapid, a pair of 

 these Snipes, who then uttered a discordant quacking sound ; 

 something like the bleat they make when they have de- 

 scended to the ground, and which they accompany with 

 an attitude of peculiar stupidity, balancing the head for- 

 wards, and the tail upwards and downwards, like the action 

 of some automaton toy, jerked and set in motion by a tight 

 drawn strinof. 



After incubation, which takes place rather early in the 

 spring, the humming is no longer heard, and the sprightly 

 aerial evolutions which appeared so indefatigable, have now 

 given way to sedater attitudes and feebler tones. A few 

 pairs no doubt breed in the extensive and almost inaccessi- 

 ble morasses of Cambridge ponds or lagoons ; and I have 

 been informed, that they select a tuft of sedge for the foun- 

 dation of the nest, which is constructed with considerable 

 art ; the eggs, like those of the European species, about 4, 

 are perhaps alike olivaceous and spotted with brown. They 

 probably scatter themselves over the interior of the conti- 

 nent to breed, no where associating in great numbers ; nor 

 are they at all common in the hyper boreal retreats chosen 

 by so many of the other wading birds. My friend, Mr. Ives 

 of Salem, also informs me, that a few pairs of this species 

 breed in that vicinity. 



* Indifferent observers m?.y well be excused, when it is known, that even Mon- 

 tague appears ignorant of the fact ; and Wilson attributes this humming to the 

 Woodcock in place of the Snipe. 



