BIRDS OF GUERNSEY. 143 



likely places would be the wild gorse and heath- 

 covered valleys leading down to the Gouffre and 

 Petit Bo Bay, as there is plenty of water and soft 

 feeding places in both ; I have never seen one there, 

 however, though I have several times walked both 

 those valleys and the intervening land during the 

 breedings-eason, and I should think all these places 

 w^ere much too much overrun with picnic parties and 

 excursionists to allow of Snipes breeding there now. 

 Should the Snipe, however, still breed in the Island, 

 it would be as well to give it a place in the Guernsey 

 Bird Act, as it is much more worthy of protection 

 during the breeding-season than many of the birds 

 there mentioned. Sometimes in the autumn I have 

 seen and shot Snipe in the most unlikely places 

 when scrambling along between huge granite 

 boulders lying on a surface of hard granite rock, 

 where it would be perfectly impossible for a Snipe 

 to pick up a living ; indeed with his sensitive bill 

 I do not believe a Snipe, if he found anything 

 eatable, could pick it off the hard ground. Probably 

 the Snipes I have found in these unlikely places 

 were not there by choice, but because driven from 

 their more favourite places by the continual gunning 

 going on in almost e^'ery field inland. 



The Snipe is included in Professor Ansted's list, 

 but only marked as occurring in Guernsey : it is 

 difficult to say why this should be, when the Solitary 

 Snipe and the Jack Snipe are marked as occurring 



