JACK SNIPE 



103 



evenings, as scarcely audible at over a hundred paces and recalling 

 the tapping noise made by the death-watch beetle. He writes the 

 sound as "Tettettettetteti" etc., and saj^s each note lasts six seconds 

 at a time, as the bird sweeps over the marsh now rising and then 

 falling in tone as it is uttered. 



V. Russon, the Estonian ornithologist, also observed the flight on 

 a marsh near Kurkull, in Estonia, and noticed that the snipe rose 

 high in the air and gradually descended again after a flight of 

 several hundred yards. He compares the sound to the words : " Lok- 

 toggi, lok-togg?\ lok-toggi" which certainly agree with the impres- 

 sion given by Wolley's graphic description. He says the local names 

 current in the district are derived from the resemblance the bird's 

 notes bear to the rattle of a dilapidated wagon wheel. In the night 

 the jack snipe is silent, but the display begins again with the first 

 glimmering of dawn, but does not as a rule last long. The note 

 described by Naumann he only heard on two occasions just before 

 the bird settled in the swamp and believed it to be caused by rapid 

 snapping of the bill. 



Nesting. — Like the common snipe, the jack snipe breeds in the 

 marshes, choosing a slight hollow in a fairly dry, grassy, or sedge- 

 grown spot, but close to open swamp. Wolley describes the five 

 nests seen by him as being all alike in structure, " made loosely of 

 little pieces of grass and equisetum not at all woven together, with 

 a few old leaves of the dwarf birch." It is an extremely close sitter, 

 not stirring from its eggs till almost trodden on, while one bird 

 actualty allowed Wolley to touch it with his hand before it flew. 

 The breeding season is late, for eggs are rarely met with before mid- 

 June and have been recorded throughout July and even in August. 



Ralph Chislett (1927) has published his recent experience with 

 the nesting habits of the jack snipe, from which the following is 

 quoted : 



The wide marsh stretched for a number of miles between the birch-clad 

 slopes of some low hills. From the hillsides, at intervals, open sheets of 

 water of varying dimensions could be seen, and a fringe of the birch forest 

 stretched almost down to a small, peaty pool. Through the woodland fringe 

 a stream hurried, clear and cold with melted snow from the hill. Leaving the 

 stream at a place where yellow globe-flowers grew in profusion, we followed 

 the ridges of soft ground which intersected the marsh. Progress was impeded 

 by scrub-willow, while hummocks of moss and mounds of crowberry and vac- 

 cinium overlay the peat foundation of the ridge, many of the hummocks being 

 white with cloudberry blooms. Between the ridges in the marshy tracts grass 

 grew thinly through the moss, and still more thinly in the centers, where our 

 feet were brought up firmly at a depth of eighteen inches by the still frozen 

 bottom. Later in the summer the marshes would probably be deeper. 



Not more than two hundred yards from the wood, a ridge sank and allowed 

 the surplus water from one flattened area of grassy marsh to drain through to 



