WOODCOCK AND SNIPE iii 



food compels them to feed apart, for they do not 

 get a worm or insect every time they probe, or, I 

 should sav, bore. 



The Jack Snipe is a solitary species, and the 

 smallest of his family in the country ; it has never 

 been found breeding here, in fact up to the present 

 little is knov/n about its breeding habits. The 

 dapper little fellow will make himself contented in 

 a very small space, and keeps himself in good order 

 when his larger relatives are in poor case. Any 

 tuft or clod that will hide a Lark will shelter him 

 from observation ; and when a place suits him he is 

 hard to move. You may put him up a dozen times 

 from a field, but back he comes and pitches again. 

 When in first-rate order — and it is very seldom that 

 he is not so — he will wei^h two ounces. He is a 

 first-rate bird for a poor shot. One of my friends 

 shot at one for a week and never got him, and some 

 of his acquaintances remarked satirically that " he 

 was trying to sow his little medder with sparrer-shot." 



In hard weather, when the snow is deep and 

 frozen on the surface, the Snipe suffers terribly, 

 and thousands of these birds die of starvation. 

 In some places so wretchedly poor are the dead 

 birds, mere skeletons in fact covered with feathers, 

 that the Dun Crows will not notice them, nor the 

 Gulls on the coast-lines. If, when things are 

 desperate, a sudden change comes, — and it docs 

 come at times very suddenh', — those that liave 

 survived hard times becrin to feed at once, for worms 

 and other things come near the surface directly. 



