84 BULLETIN 142, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



away, and then fly up after a time, considerably nearer me, making it evident 

 that he was attempting to lure me away. Then again, after trying these antics 

 for a time, he would suddenly mount to the sky, and there would follow a 

 season of the weird wind music — always delightful. 



Aretas A. Saunders, in his notes, says that — 



After the eggs are laid the female often answers this sound with a long 

 call okee okee okee repeated 8 or 10 times and resembling the " buckwheat " 

 call of the guinea hen. I believe the female is sitting on the eggs when she 

 calls this way, for I have found the nest by locating the position of the sound 

 at night and returning in the morning. The nest is usually in about the center 

 of the male's circle of flight. 



Nesting. — As with the woodcock my personal experience with the 

 nesting of the Wilson snipe has been limited to one nest, found in 

 the Magdalen Islands on June 18, 1904. The nest was found by 

 watching the bird go to it in the East Point marshes. It was on dry 

 ground in a little clump of grass, under some low and rather open 

 bayberry bushes, on the edge of a bogey arm of the marsh, which 

 extended up into the woods ; it was built up about 2 inches above the 

 ground and was made of short, dead straws and dead bayberry leaves ; 

 it measured 6 inches in outside and 3 inches in inside diameter. The 

 four eggs which it contained blended perfectly with their surround- 

 ings and although in plain sight, they were not easily seen. P. B. 

 Philipp (1925), who has found many snipe's nests in the Magdalen 

 Islands, where he says the species is increasing, writes: 



The nesting begins in the last 10 days of May, and is a simple affair. Usually 

 wet marshy ground is selected, preferably with low brush and grass with 

 lumps or tussocks rising above the bog water. The nest is a shallow hollow 

 made in the grass or moss of one of these lumps, lined with broken bits of dead 

 grass and sometimes with dead leaves. 



William L. Kells (1906) gives a graphic account of finding a nest 

 of the Wilson snipe in southern Ontario, as follows : 



On the 17th of May, 1905, as I was passing through a patch of low ground 

 overgrown with second growth willows, a rather large-sized bird flushed from 

 a spot a few feet from where I had jumped over a neck of water. I did not 

 see the exact place from which the bird had flown, but the fluttering sound of 

 her wing caught my ear, and looking ahead I saw the creature, who with out- 

 spread tail and wings, was fluttering on the damp earth, and with her long 

 bill down in the mud, was giving vent to a series of squeaking sounds. I knew 

 at once that this bird had flushed from a nest, and that the object of her actions 

 was to draw my attention from something that she was very desirous to con- 

 ceal ; but a little research revealed a nest containing four beautiful eggs. A 

 clump of willows a little elevated stood about 6 feet from the pool over which 

 the bird had flown, and midway between the water and the willows, which 

 overhung it the nest was placed. This was simply a slight depression made by 

 the bird in the moss and dry grass, and except from its concealed situation 

 and being a little more expanded, there was no particular distinction between 

 it and those of the more familiar killdeer plover and spotted sandpiper, though 

 the lining was probably of a warmer texture, being of fine dry grass, while the 



