342 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 



distance, over a hard hollow road ; it came in fours 

 with a similar cadence, and a like clear yet hollow 

 sound. -^ "^ •^ It was not long after I heard it that 

 I ascertained that the remarkable hammering noise in 

 the air was made by the jack snipe." Some four of 

 five nests of the jack snipe were found at this time by 

 Mr. WoUey, at Karto Uoma, and identified by the 

 capture of the parent birds, one of which allowed hun 

 to touch it with his hand before it rose. The nests 

 were " 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, placed in a dry sedgy 

 or grassy spot, close to a more open swamp." 



The extraordinary disproportion in size between the 

 eggs of the jack snipe and the bird itself is even more 

 surprising than in the case of the common species, since, 

 to adopt Mr. Hewitson's description, " they are precisely 

 of the same length as those of the snipe, but are of less 

 width across the broadest part. The bird weighs about 

 two ounces. The four eggs are more than an ounce and 

 a half. The great egg of the guillemot is one eighth of 

 the weight of the bird ; the eggs of the jack snipe weigh 

 nearly as much as it does itself." The eggs of this 

 snipe are subject also to much variation in size and 

 colouring. According to Mr. Gould " there is but little 

 external difference in the appearance of the sexes, one 

 style of plumage being common to both;" but in the 

 breeding season the colour of their plumage is intensified 

 in the rich metallic tints of purple, green, and buff. 

 Some of those killed here in autumn retain the rich 

 purple colour on the upper tail coverts.'^ 



* From a communication to the " Zoologist " for 1868, by Mr. 

 E. H. Rodd, of Penzance (p. 1220), it would seem that the jack snipe 

 moults all its tail feathers simultaneously in the spring. A speci- 

 men brought to him on the 4th of April had an entire new tail 



