SCOLOPACID®. All 
another descent was made, and after the same 
movements had been repeated with most aston- 
ishing regularity for some fifteen or twenty mi- 
nutes, a sloping flight was directed towards the 
ground, and, throwing the wings above the back, at 
the same time uttering a rapid ‘chucking’ cry, it 
dropped out of sight amongst the grass. ‘There can 
be very little doubt that the bleating sound is made 
by the wings, for it is only heard while the bird is 
descending with them extended ; never at any other 
time.” 
The nest of the Snipe is generally placed amongst 
heather or long grass, no particular care being taken 
to conceal it. Meyer says it is usually lined with a 
few dry bents and stalks of heath or bog-plants. 
The food consists mostly of worms, which the 
bird procures by boring with its long and sensitive 
beak in the soft ground it usually frequents ; as well 
as worms, it appears to eat insects and vegetable 
substances.* The beak of this,as of all the true 
Snipes, is peculiarly soft and sensitive towards the 
tip: when dried the soft skin of this part shrivels 
up and looks as if pitted all over with small holes— 
Yarrell says like the end of a thimble: this peculiar 
soft and sensitive nature of the beak may, in some 
way, account for the way in which Snipes suffer from 
starvation when the ground is very hard with frost, 
* Meyer's ‘ British Birds,’ vol. y., p. 52. 
2N2 
