i6o A Book of the Snipe. 



that most suspicious of fowl, the curlew, 

 poking about in the ooze within ten yards 

 of my unconcealed but motionless form. 

 Once I sat by a lonely farmyard pond in 

 company with a Shoveller drake, and three 

 or four Full Snipe, who were running about 

 amongst and actually qtiarrelling with the 

 domestic ducks, the proper lords of the 

 manor of mud alono- the edore ! Whenever 

 a snipe, then, which has gone away un- 

 touched or unsaluted, is zigzagging dubiously 

 about overhead as described above, stand 

 *' motionless as ice," even though one leg 

 be thigh-deep in mud and the other cocked 

 up on an inconveniently high tussock. It 

 is quite on the cards that he will suddenly 

 swoop to the ground so close to you that 

 you may miss him, as I have often done, 

 from his very proximity. 



Movement of the face and eyes, though 

 all else be motionless, seems particularly 

 alarming to snipe ; indeed the sight of a 

 man's face appears to inspire a most un- 

 complimentary aversion in all wild creatures, 



