THE TRUE SNIPES. 21 7 



found in the Mediterranean and North Africa, extending to the 

 Azores, Madeira, the Canary Islands and wSencgambia, as well 

 as the Nile Valley, and as far as Aden. 



Habits. — The Snipe is a bird whieh is seldom seen in the day 

 unless flushed from its marshy lair, and I only once remember 

 having seen one flying of its own accord in full daylight. Off the 

 beach at Gorleston, near Yarmouth, I was wandering one morn- 

 ing in September, 1885, with a gun under my arm in case any 

 bird came along which I might want for the British Museum, 

 when I saw a cluster of small birds, apparently Dunlins or Stints, 

 flying over the sea at a short distance from the shore. As they 

 came nearer, I could make out a larger bird flying in front, and 

 evidently acting as leader to the smaller fry, of which there 

 were, perhaps, a dozen. As they passed by me at a consider- 

 able distance I aimed at the foremost bird, which was about a 

 yard or two in front of the others, thinking that it must be a 

 Knot. My shot told, and the poor bird left his followers to shift 

 for themselves, and turned shorewards, falling on a grassy cliff. 

 When I had ascended the latter I was considerably astonished 

 to find that my victim was a Common Snipe, which had been 

 acting as guide, philosopher, and friend to a party of unsophis- 

 ticated Dunlins at noonday. 



Pairs of Snipe, travelling in company, have been observed 

 crossing the sea on migration, but, as a rule, the bird is found 

 alone, though a goodly company may be in close proximity. 

 Once, no doubt, the marshes in the west of London abounded 

 with Snipe, and close to what is now Bedford Park I have my- 

 self seen a Snipe shot within the last ten years, some day to be 

 reckoned as great a marvel as the Ring-Ouzels from Turnham 

 Green and the Nightingale from the country round Bayswater, 

 of which birds specimens are in the British Museum. In the 

 water-meadows and common-lands of the Thames Valley, left 

 moist after the floods, I have known plenty of Snipe to be killed 

 quite close to London, and the way in which they will cling to a 

 locality, day after day, after having been constantly shot at, is 

 as surprising as the way in which they will suddenly disappear 

 from a place in which they have been plentiful the day before, 

 without any apparent reason. Every sportsman knows how, in 

 a favourite spot in the water-meadows, Snipe are almost sure to 

 be found in favourable weather, and how, without being actu- 



