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. * * * Jt was not long after I heard it that 
T 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. Wolley, at Karto Uoma, and identified by the 
capture of the parent birds, one of which allowed him 
to touch it with his hand before it rose. The nests 
were “alike in structure, made loosely of little pieces of 
erass 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. 3 
The extraordinary disproportion in size between the 
eges 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 
