BIRDS OF ICELAND 95 



I have seen a number of Snipes' nests in Iceland. 

 Usually, as elsewhere, they are well concealed in a 

 grassy tussock on a bog, but I have found them in 

 dry, open, sunny spots in thick birch scrub, and 

 entirely unconcealed by a single grass-blade. The 

 nest is made of fine dry grass, and the four eggs are 

 olive brown in tint, spotted and blotched with dark 

 brown. Length, a shade over 1 J inches. 



Snipe are often very tame in Iceland. I remember 

 being very much charmed with a pair at 'As (near 'As- 

 byrgi, that wonderful double rift in the north-east). 

 I was making my morning toilet by a small waterfall 

 near the farm, and just across the stream, on a small 

 mud-bank not twenty yards from me, were a pair of 

 snipe, who took no notice of me whatever, but were 

 diligently probing, almost up to their eyes, for their 

 breakfast in the mud. I watched them for some time, 

 and the eager little wriggle of their heads, when their 

 delicately sensitive bill-tips encountered the faint 

 movement of some wee living thing down in the mud, 

 was most interesting and instructive. The thing when 

 extracted was too small, and too quickly disposed of, 

 for me to see what it was. 



The Great Snipe {G. major, Gm.) has never yet 

 been obtained in Iceland, though certain guide-books 

 mention it as not uncommon. I am not aware that 

 they have the least foundation for the statement. 



