1 86 A Book of the Snipe. 



that good novelist and sportsman Mr Rider 

 Haggard in * The Globe' details his experi- 

 ences in one of the islands of the Hebrides 

 during the terrible winter of 1890-91, — a 

 black year indeed in the memory of all 

 birds. He writes : '' The keeper there told 

 me that he picked up many of them dead 

 or dying by the side of the frozen water- 

 courses ; indeed the snipe on that island, 

 where they used to swarm, ^ are only now 

 beginning to recover in numbers from the 

 effects of that year of desolation." 



In my experience, however, only the most 

 sudden of visitations can catch the snipe 

 napping in such numbers as this. Indeed 

 they are if anything quicker than other 



1 I presume Mr Haggard means swarm during the nesting 

 season. It is unlikely that severe weather in these islands 

 would seriously reduce the yearly supply of migratory snipe, 

 though it might, as he relates, depopulate an island dependent 

 almost entirely on its own stock of breeding birds. In a 

 previous part of the letter quoted he says, " One such frost, as 

 I believe, kills out more snipe and woodcock than are disposed 

 of by shooting in ten years." This is only very partially true, 

 for, as I have stated, only a small minority of belated birds 

 remain as victims to the rigour of the weather, the wiser 

 majority having departed early far from the reach of frost. 



1 



