CHAPTER XVI 



THE SWAMP 



(The Common Snipe and the Jack Snipe) 



AMONG our wild birds the snipe and the peregrine 

 are distinct for their marvellous powers of flight, 

 both of them depending upon their wings, in widely 

 different ways, for their means of livelihood. The snipe, 

 beloved of eastern sportsmen, is a bird of immense home 

 range, and probably no other wild bird travels such great 

 distances during the course of the season from one feeding 

 range to another. Thus the bird is still further distinct 

 for its distribution over almost the whole of the earth's 

 surface, from the fever-ridden swamps of the Gold 

 Coast and the heights of the Himalayas, to the sloughs 

 of Alaska (Wilson's Snipe) and the radiant slopes of 

 our own brimming island. Yet, though the snipe is so 

 powerful on the wing, it seems to be specially singled 

 out for the attention of birds of prey. Neither the merlin 

 nor the peregrine can let it pass without giving chase. 

 A hundred birds may fly by unheeded, but the snipe 

 ever presents an irresistible target — possibly because 

 its flesh is as much prized by bird and beast as by man, 

 possibly because the falcon which has once been fooled 

 by a snipe thereafter bears the enmity of defeat towards 

 the race. 



Probably the habits of no bird are so little understood 

 by the majority of sportsmen as those of this little brown 

 bird of our fens and moorland swamps, and this because 

 one must be famiUar with the bird in spring and summer, 



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