316 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 
authority in such matters, assures me he once heard 
a snipe drumming in the depth of winter, and on draw- 
ing the attention of his marshman, William Hewitt, to 
what he then considered a very strange occurrence, 
the old man assured him that he had remarked the 
same thing on several occasions, and that he regarded 
it as a sign of stormy weather; which in that instance 
proved correct. I think there can be no doubt that 
this is a purely “amatory signal,’ but just as some 
birds sing in autumn or winter, so cock snipes will, no 
doubt, at other than breeding times. 
There had been various attempts to account for the 
way in which the neighing or drumming was produced, 
but no one succeeded in doing so satisfactorily until Mr. 
W. Meves, the conservator of the Zoological Museum 
of Stockholm, discovered that it was due to the vibration 
of the stiff webs of the outer tail-feathers, caused by 
the action upon them of the air as the bird descends 
rapidly in the course of its “play;” the sound, 
as I have before remarked, being heard only as the 
snipe falls.* That it is not produced in any way 
by the throat is evident from the fact that the 
ordinary ery of the snipe, which Selby not inaptly 
likens to “the word chissick lispingly pronounced,” 
has been heard simultaneously with the drumming 
noise; and Mr. Harting (“‘ Birds of Middlesex”) on one 
occasion, was enabled to satisfy himself that the beak 
remained closed at the moment the drumming sound 
was perceptible. Mr. Meves thus explains the circum- 
stances which led to his very remarkable discovery. 
“The peculiar form,” he says, “of the tail feathers in 
some foreign species, nearly allied to the common snipe ; 
* Another sound, or properly speaking, note, is occasionally 
heard as the bird ascends, which Yarrell likens to the word 
“tinker, tinker, uttered in a sharp shrill tone.” 
