Snipe 'drumming' Si 



With the commencemrnt of the downward fliglit, the drumming 

 begins. After a moment's delay, for the sound to travel, the 

 vibratory luim reaches your ears, seems to swell and shake, then to 

 lessen and finally cease with an almost startling abruptness as the 

 Snipe turns and recommences its upward flight. 



So may you watch him, alternatel\- falling and drumming, 

 climbing and silent, until your patience comes to an end or until iiis 

 energy is exhausted, and he drops down to the ground. 



But he is merel\- one musician among many : far and near you 

 hear the same weird drumming ; faint and tremulous, or loud and 

 resonant, as the birds plunge in their aerial flights up and down the 

 marsh land. 



The drumming flight consists o! two distinct phases ; the 

 upward cUmb, when, commonly speaking, no sound is heard, and 

 the downward fall, when the drumming becomes audible ; the whole 

 cycie occupying, on the average, eight to nine seconds. 



I have made a good many observations on the point with a stop 

 watch, and I found that the downward drum rarely lasted more 

 than two seconds at the outside ; the interval taking about seven 

 seconds. One bird I watched for over an hour, and he kept with 

 extraorchnary exactitude to these times, two for the drumming, 

 and seven for the interval. 



I was lucky enough in this observation to see a most remarkable 

 aerial display, quite apart from the drumming. 



The bird had been drumming regularly for perhaps half-an- 

 hour, always at a great height, so that the bottom of the downward 

 stoop must ha\-e been 70-80 feet from the ground. He had been 

 keeping at nearh' the same average level throughout the flight. 



He was just iinishing a downward stoop, fortunately fairly 

 close to me, when he was joined by a second Snipe, which I took to 

 be the female. Where the bird came from, I don't know, but 1 

 imagine that she had risen from the nest in compliment to tlie musical 

 display of her husband. 



The effect on the drumming Snipe was immediate and most 

 strange. The bottom of his " stoop " had carried him to within, 

 say, 80 feet of the ground ; he now slowly fell from that level to 

 within 10 feet of the ground, the whole of the intervening distance 

 being occupied by the most extraordinary acrobatic evolutions I 

 have ever seen a bird go through in the air. 



He first fully opened his wings, and raised them over his back 

 with his legs extended, as though about to alight in mid-air. In 

 this manner, he gently floated downwards ; then he turned over 

 first on one side and tlien on the other, making his line of flight at 

 right angles to the earth, resuming after each turn the old position 

 of walking on the air. 



The final exhibition surpassed anything that had gone before : 

 when he was within 15 feet of the ground (and not more than 20 

 yards from where I was standing), he turned right over, so that his 



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