300 THE GAME BIEDS AND WILD FOWL 



absolute act of feeding, rather late in the morning and long hefore sunset. The 

 flesh of the Jack Snipe is excellent, and even in very severe weather, when 

 Common Snipe have been woefully out of condition, I have remarked that Jack 

 Snipe continue to remain as plump and fat as ever. 



Nidification. It is rather remarkable that so little has been recorded of 

 the breeding habits of the Jack Snipe. Every writer has to depend upon the 

 information gathered by Wolley, and this in a great measure is meagre and 

 vague. It would be interesting to hear the accounts of other naturalists. The 

 Jack Snipe begins to breed towards the end of June. Wolley found the first 

 nest on the 17th of that month, and four others on the 18th. From his account 

 we are left in ignorance as to whether the male bird drums like the Common 

 Snipe during the nesting season ; indeed, the facts appear to be against it. He 

 describes the bird careering about the air over the marshes of Muonioniska, 

 uttering a sound like the distant canter of a horse over a hard road. This 

 evidently refers to the note, which is compared by Naumann to the clicking of 

 the death-watch beetle, and undoubtedly not to drumming or bleating. He 

 found the nests placed in dry spots amongst the sedge and grass close to the 

 borders of the more open swamps. They were mere hollows lined with a little 

 dry grass, equisetum, and dead withered leaves of the dwarf birch. The eggs are 

 four in number, ranging from buff to olive in ground-colour, blotched and spotted, 

 and sometimes streaked with rich blackish-brown, and with underlying markings 

 of pale brown and grey. They are pyriform, very large for the size of the bird 

 (a clutch weighs nearly as much as the hen herself), and measure on an average 

 l - 5 inch in length by I'O inch in breadth. The female is a close sitter, and 

 remains brooding over her eggs until the last moment ; Wolley was allowed to 

 approach one nest within six inches before the parent rose. One brood only is 

 reared in the year, so far as is known. 



Diagnostic characters. Limnocryptes, with the mantle glossed with 

 purple, and the inner webs of the scapulars with metallic green ; rectrices twelve 

 in number. Length, 7J- inches. 



