82 BULLETIN 142, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Spring. — The snipe is an early migrant, leaving its winter quarters 

 just below the frost line, just as soon as the northern frost goes out 

 of the ground, about as early as the woodcock. When the warm 

 spring rains have softened the meadows, when the hylas have thawed 

 out and are peeping in the pond holes, when the cheerful okalee 

 of the redwings is heard in the marshes and when the herring are 

 running up the streams to spawn, then we need not look in vain for 

 the coming of the snipe. Low, moist meadow lands, or wet pastures 

 frequented by cattle, are favorite haunts, where their splashings 

 and borings are frequently seen among the cow tracks. They are also 

 found in high, bushy, wet pastures, or in the vicinity of spring- 

 fed brooks among scattered clumps of willows, huckleberries or 

 alders. 



Courtship. — On the wings of the south wind comes the first wisp 

 of snipe, the will-o-the-wisp of the marshes, here to-day and gone 

 to-morrow, coming and going under the cover of darkness. All 

 through the spring migration and all through the nesting season we 

 may hear the weird winnowing sound of the snipe's courtship flight, 

 a tremulous humming sound, loud and penetrating, audible at a long 

 distance. One is both thrilled and puzzled when he hears it for 

 the first time, for it seems like a disembodied sound, the sighing of 

 some wandering spirit, until the author is discovered, a mere speck, 

 sweeping across the sky. The sound resembles the noise made by 

 a duck's wings in rapid flight, a rapidly pulsating series of notes, 

 who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, increasing and then de- 

 creasing again in intensity. It has been termed the "bleating" 

 of the snipe, but this does not seem to describe it so well as " winnow- 

 ing." J. R. Whitaker, with whom I hunted snipe in Newfoundland, 

 told me that both sexes indulge in this performance and George M. 

 Sutton (1923) suggested the possibility of it. 



Dr. Joseph Grinnell (1900) gives the best account of this courtship 

 flight, as follows: 



I was in a broad grassy swale, studded here and there with scrub spruces 

 and bordered by taller timber, when my attention was attracted by a curious 

 far-off song which puzzled me for some time. Finally I descried the producer, 

 a Wilson's snipe, so far overhead as to be scarcely discernible against the 

 clear sky. It was flying slowly in a broad circle with a diameter of perhaps 

 600 yards, so that the direction of the sound was ever shifting, thus confusing 

 me until I caught sight of its author. This lofty flight was not continuously 

 on the same level, but consisted of a series of lengthy undulations or swoops. 

 At the end of each swoop the bird would mount up to its former level. The 

 drop at the beginning of the downward dive was with partly closed, quivering 

 wings, but the succeeding rise was accomplished by a succession of rapid wing 

 beats. The peculiar resonant song was a rolling series of syllables uttered 

 during the downward swoop, and just before this drop merged into the fol- 

 lowing rise a rumbling and whirring sound became audible, accompanying the 



