330 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 



flagstaff, erected on a small island at that end of the 

 " Mere" where the snipes always breed. On one occa- 

 sion he saw a pair resting on it at the same time, and 

 the black-headed gulls occasionally do the same. I 

 could adduce other evidence, were it at all necessary, 

 but though it so happens that I have never witnessed 

 it myself, I am not the less positive as to the fact. It 

 certainly is a rare circumstance, or it would scarcely 

 have remained so long unnoticed by authors, but if the 

 curlew, whimbrelj and spotted redshank, as stated by 

 Hewitson, on his own and Mr. Wolley's authority, and 

 the greenshank, as Mr. Alfred Newton informs me, 

 regularly perch on trees, as well as redshanks on 

 railings, during the breeding season ; whilst green sand- 

 pipers, herons, spoonbills, and even cormorants, to say 

 nothing of many kinds of ducks, frequent trees for 

 breeding purposes — all of which one might say, if 

 imaware of their custom, were not at all likely to do 

 so — what becomes of the "utter impossibility," as 

 alleged, of the snipe committing a hke breach of 

 ornithological propriety.* 



The common snipe varies much both in size and 

 weight, the latter depending on the weather and the 

 facilities for obtaining food. The ordinary weight may 



* Mr. Gould does not refer to this point in his " Birds of 

 Great Britain," but in a communication to " Land and Water" 

 for February 1st, 1868, publishes a letter from Mr. W. H. Pope, 

 Colonial Secretary of Prince Edward Island, in which that 

 gentleman describes his successful attempt to shoot a snipe from 

 off a tree; which specimen he sent to Mr. Gould, who had pre- 

 viously doubted his assertion that he had before seen "the snipe 

 of that country (Scolopax wilsoni) perching on the tops of the 

 highest trees." To this I may also add that the late Mr. Wheel- 

 wright, in his " Bush Wanderings of a Naturalist" (p. 100) states 

 that the Australian snipes (Scolopax australis), which he there 

 met with, " often perch in the tea-tree scrub," and that he had 

 " twice killed them sitting on the bare limb of a large gum tree." 



