Common Snipe 87 



When a Snipe's eggs are hatching, it is, therefore, no uncommon 

 thing to find a considerable difference in time between the hatching 

 of the four eggs ; three may hatch out during the course of one day, 

 and the remaining one not until 18-24 hours later. 



If \-ou watch such a nest you will see that as each chick hatches, 

 the broken fragments of shell are removed at once, and removed to 

 a considerable distance by the parent bird. For the broken egg- 

 shell, with its glistening white inner surface and the remains of 

 the blood-stained membranes, is now very noticeable among tlie 

 surroundings, and is a source of danger. The chicks that are hatched, 

 leave the nest, and there remains in it only the one unhatched egg 

 with its inmate assiduously hammering away at the confining walls. 



The point I want especially to draw attention to is the removal 

 of the tell-tale fragments of broken shell, which would almost 

 infallibly catch the eye of any passer by, if they were left in or about 

 the nest. 



Snipe are rather early breeders. Eggs have been found in the 

 last days of March ; and I have mj'self taken a full clutch by the 

 loth April. The majority breed in the latter half of that m.onth. 

 Fresh eggs may be found much later than this, and are not 

 uncommon even in June. These late nests are, no doubt, second 

 laying, and frequently consist of three instead of four to the clutch. 



I do not believe, in favourable circumstances, that a Snipe 

 does raise two broods in the year. If she hatches and rears her first 

 brood in safety, she does not lay again that season. But the 

 percentage of accidents of one kind and another to the first nests is 

 very high. 



On the wet commons, such as the Thorpe Fen, they are 

 continuall}' robbed by people looking for Plovers' eggs ; they are 

 sometimes frosted, and 'often spoilt by rooks, late-staying hoodie- 

 crows or other vermin. In some seasons, unexpected floods drown 

 them out in numbers. In such cases, a second nest is invariably- 

 made, and it is not a very uncommon thing to shoot a Snipe with 

 the remains of the nestling down still adhering to the feathers, in 

 the second or third week in August. 



Their food consists of insects, water-snails of various kinds, 

 and worms, especially the small red worm abounding in the muddy 

 ooze where thev love to feed ; a c]uantit\' of grit is also found in their 

 stomachs, ingested for purposes of digestion.* 



In summer, the insect diet rather preponderates, and this is 

 probabl}- the reason why the Snipe shot in the early part of the 

 shooting season, are such poor-flavoured birds as compared with 

 the winter Snipe, whose staple diet has been worms. It is a fact 

 that an August Snipe, like an August Woodcock, is a wretched 

 bird for the table ; that this is a question of diet and not of 



* Gilbert White (letter xxix) remarks on the difficulty of ascertaining the diet of Snipe 

 and \^'oodcock : "All that I could ever find was a soft mucus, among which lay many pellucid 

 small gravels." 



