296 The Snipe. 



Audubon says that in the northern districts, meaning Maine, 

 Nova Scotia, the Northern States, and Canada, " the Snipe begins 

 to lay its eggs in the early part of June. The swampy parts of 

 the extensive moss-covered marshes in elevated situations afibrd it 

 places of security and comfort, in which it is not likely to be dis- 

 turbed by man, and finds immediately around it an abundance of 

 food. The nest itself is a mere hollow in the moss, scantily inlaid 

 with a few grasses. The eggs are four, placed with the small ends 

 together, and measure one inch and five-eighths by one and one- 

 eighth, being pyriform, with the tip somewhat inflated. The 

 ground colour is a yellowish, olive, pretty thickly spotted, and ^ 

 blotched with light and dark umbers, the markings increasing 

 in size as they approach the large end, where they form a circle. 

 The young, like those of the woodcock, leave the nest as soon as 

 they are hatched, and so resemble those of the common Snipe of 

 Europe, Scolopax gallinago^ that the same description answers for 

 both, they being covered with down of different tints of brown and 

 greyish yellow. The bill, at this age, is short, very soft and easily 

 bent by the least pressure, nor does it acquire its full growth 

 before winter ; and its length differs in different apparently full 

 grown individuals, by half an inch or even three-fourths. They 

 seem to feed at first upon minute insects collected on the surface 

 of the mires, or amid the grass and moss, but as they grow older 

 and the bill becomes firmer and larger, they probe the ground 

 like their parents, and soon become expert in this operation, in- 

 troducing the bill at every half inch or so of the oozy mire, from 

 which they principally obtain their food. In the middle States 

 this Snipe, however, has been found breeding in meadows, as well 

 as in the State of Maine ; and it also nestles in the mountainous 

 districts of these parts of the Union." 



After spending the summer in the north these birds remov^ 

 southward in October, and then become so numerous in some of 

 the states that hundreds may be shot in the same field. When 

 started they there rise in the air in flocks, each one emitting its 

 cry, waa-aik, after which they fly around a few times and then 

 suddenly alight not many yards from the spot where they were. 

 They occasionally are attached so much to one spot that they will 

 repeatedly return no matter how often they may be shot at, until 

 the greater part of the flock is killed. Audubon says " they are 

 abundant in the wet savannahs in the Floridas, from which they 

 retire a few weeks earlier than from Louisiana and the CarolinaS) 



