SCOLOPACID, ALT 
them over and over again. I once had an oppor- 
tunity of witnessing this local, attachment in the 
Jack Snipe, which continued for two or three winters 
to visit the same spot, on some meadows near the 
house here, in spite of drainage and other improve- 
ments which had quite driven away all his big 
relations. What became of him at last I do not 
know—whether he got shot, or at last found his 
favourite locality too dry to hold him. 
The food of the Jack Snipe consists of aquatic 
insects and their larve and small worms, for which 
it bores in the mud;* small white larve, such as 
are found in black bogs, are especially mentioned, 
and seed are also often found in its stomach, once 
hemp-seed, and generally gravel.t 
The nest appears to be made very 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 plumage of the Jack Snipe differs consider- 
ably from that of the Common Snipe, and is much 
brighter and more glossy. The beak is dark brown 
at the point, reddish brown at the base; irides dark 
brown; the space from the beak to the eye dark 
brown; over this and over the eye a broadish streak 
« Meyer’s ‘ British Birds,’ vol. v., p. 60. 
+ Yarrell, vol. iii., p. 43. } Td: p. 44. 
