60 THE BIRDS OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



I have had some good Snipe-shooting in various 

 parts of Ireland, my experience of that country being 

 that the Snipes, though sometimes to be found in vast 

 numbers upon the bogs, very seldom lie sufficiently 

 close thereon to afford opportunities for making large 

 bags, the best sport always being on the rushy 

 undrained moors, pasture-lands, and swampy potato- 

 fields. 



A good many Snipes bred annually around a 

 shooting-lodge that I formerly rented in Inverness- 

 shire, not in the flat meadow-land at the bottom of 

 the glen, but on the steep heather-clad hillsides that 

 surrounded us, on the banks of the innumerable little 

 burns that fed our principal stream. A few were 

 always to be found on the flat in August, but their 

 numbers were as nothing in comparison with those 

 of the Snipes that came down nightly to feed, and 

 might be heard after dark till the end of September. 



Large numbers of Snipes breed in some of the 

 Hebrides, and I have been told of great bags having 

 occasionally been secured in Lewis and Harris in 

 August and September ; but in most of the districts 

 in our country in which any considerable quantity of 

 Snipes are bred they leave early, and very often 

 in the great marshes of East Norfolk, for instance, 

 but few of these birds are to be found between the 

 end of August and the beginning of March, when 

 they are, or should be, protected by the institution of 

 " close time." 



Our species is to be met with at various seasons 

 throughout Europe and Asia, and in Africa it has, 

 according to Yarrell, been recorded from the Gambia 

 on the west, and the Somali country on the east coast 

 of that continent. It has frequently occurred in 



