Northern Observations of Inland Birds 253 



from tuft to tuft for over half a mile, always convinced 

 that it was in the tuft ahead. When at the end of this 

 excursion I chanced to look upwards into the heavens 

 and see the creature of the strange music, I was fully 

 three-quarters of a mile from the point at which the sound 

 was first heard. It is quite possible, therefore, that the 

 purpose of the male snipe's drumming may be to lead 

 trespassers from the vicinity where his wife sits her eggs, 

 and it is conceivable that the deceit may act in the case 

 of a young fox or other foe of the kind as it acted on 

 the occasion of my own first visit to the habitat of the 

 snipe. 



It is noticeable that the peasant names for this bird 

 invariably have some bearing upon its habit of drumming. 

 Its breeding haunts might, indeed, be defined solely on 

 the authority of its local names ; thus in North Yorkshire 

 it is named moorlamb and heather bleater, while in its 

 breeding haunts in France it is popularly called chevre 

 volant. In Sweden the name sky-goat distinguishes 

 it ; in Germany, sky-nanny ; Gaelic, goat of the air ; 

 Finnish, sky-ram ; Irish, kid of the air ; Lithuanian, God's 

 goat ; Welsh, sheep of the marshes. Most of these names 

 suggest that the sound is like the bleating of a sheep or 

 a goat, and it certainly has a very distinct resemblance 

 to the bleating of a kid heard some distance away. Local 

 names also suggest the neighing of a horse, as for example 

 the Norwegian " sky-horse " and " mist-foal.'' 



The legend of the snipe has indeed some bearing on 

 this latter point. Once upon a time a Norwegian farmer 

 possessed a servant who, day after day, took the horse 

 to graze in a waterless pasture. The horse stood it as 

 long as he could, but one day the man, on going to catch 

 the animal, could not find it. He then went for his 

 master, and the two of them searched together, where- 

 upon they were astounded to hear the neighing of the 



