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, Iam 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, whimbrel, 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 
unaware of their custom, were not at all likely to do 
so—what becomes of the “utter impossibility,” as 
alleged, of the snipe committing a lke 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.” 
