COMMON SNIPE. 311 



Common, near Westacre; Lexham Common, and 

 several smaller ones on the Nar and other streams 

 in that j)ortion of the county; and East Enston, 

 to the north-east, within three miles of the sea at 

 Happisburg'h, may be specially noticed. Both for the 

 home-bred and migratory snipes these rough waste lands 

 have peculiar attractions, the soft mossy turf being 

 intersected by small streamlets, and in the more swampy 

 portions a dense growth of reeds and sedges margins 

 the little " pulk " holes or pools of water. East 

 Ruston Common has also peculiar features, inasmuch 

 as one portion, bordered by a running stream, is covered 

 with small bushes of sallow and birch, where wood- 

 cocks as well as snipe are frequently met with, and the 

 rivulet is a favourite haunt of the green sandpiper. 

 The rest of the ground, from which the turf is cut, con- 

 sists of alternate ridges or " seams " of peat, and wide 

 trenches in which the water is generally more or less 

 deep ; and as this constitutes the best feeding ground for 

 the snipes, the sportsman has to pick his way along these 

 narrow walls of peat, with the certainty, if unaccustomed 

 to this mode of progression, of overbalancing himself, 

 one side or the other, at almost every shot. Yet here, 

 in a good season, from three to four hundred snipes have 

 been killed, even of late years ; and when I visited it in 

 August, 1865, about five and twenty couples had been 

 shot up to that time ; all bred around the small broads 

 and swamps of that wild neighbourhood, no foreign 

 snipes having appeared up to that time. 



The snipe is an early breeder, and the return flights 

 which visit our marshes on their northward passage, 

 usually make their appearance about the second or third 

 week in March; but in mild seasons, as Mr. Lubbock 

 states, *^ parties are often found skimming round the 

 edges of the broads, and alighting on the masses of 

 decayed weed and floating sedge, so early as the middle 



