HUNTING BIRDS WITH CAMERA 



it would take about two hundred pounds of meat a day 

 to keep you. Do you suppose your father would sup- 

 port you and send you to college if you ate forty dollars' 

 worth of meat a day?" Ned thought that his fond 

 Papa would have to send him to work instead of to 

 college, so it is well that his appetite is not quite so 

 tremendous. 



The game bird which is the nearest relative of the 

 Woodcock is the Wilson's Snipe. Not many people 

 except sportsmen know it at all, but the trouble is that 

 a good many are as afraid as cats of getting their feet 

 wet. But it never in the world will hurt a healthy per- 

 son, if one only keeps warm by exercising and takes off 

 the wet things before sitting down. Often I have 

 walked home through the town with the water squeaking 

 in my boots like a suction pump, but I never caught 

 cold that way. But with long rubber boots, unless we 

 fall into some bog hole, we can probably keep dry, and 

 vigorous tramping in boggy meadows in April or early 

 May, or in September or October, can probably add 

 the Snipe to our acquaintance and our bird list. We 

 shall see its rapid, irregular flight, and hear its curious 

 note — "escape," it seems to say, which it proceeds to 

 do admirably, unless the intruder be a gunner and a 

 good shot besides! Often have I chuckled to see the 

 would-be snipe shooter's bang-bang, miss-miss! 



The bird goes mostly north of the United States to 

 breed, though a few do so along the northern border. 

 I have found just one nest in my life thus far, up in the 



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