302 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 



it being most frequently found in pairs, and instances 

 the fact of a fen-man, at Button, having " killed six in 

 the second week of September, 1835; four of these 

 birds were in pairs, and proved male and female respec- 

 tively." The heaviest bird he has known weighed 

 ten ounces, but the usual weight is from seven and a 

 half to eight and a half ounces. I have never had the 

 good fortune to meet with the great snipe, although 

 I have known it killed the next day on the very same 

 marsh to which I had devoted the whole of the previous 

 morning. Of some thirty specimens, however, that I 

 have handled at different times, the finest, killed on the 

 8th of September, 1858, weighed nine and a half ounces.* 

 Since I commenced making notes of such occurrences I 

 cannot remember an autumn in which I have not 

 known one or more killed in Norfolk ; and in some 

 years they have been pretty numerous ; but their usual 

 scarcity, in these parts, brings them invariably under the 

 birdstuffers* hands, and not, as in other countries, to 

 table, as one of the finest of feathered dainties. Messrs. 

 Sheppard and Whitear, who had also opportunities 

 of examining several Norfolk killed specimens, remark 

 that in this snipe the " legs are of a light flesh colour 

 blended with a slight tinge of green. The length of 

 the bill is subject to great variation." 



In Mr. Hunt's " List " five examples are said to have 

 been killed in the same week, in various parts of the 

 county in the autumn of 1826; and in 1831, Mr. Lubbock 

 states that " many were killed during August and 

 September." Mr. Rising also informs me that he 

 once shot six in one day, in his marshes at Horsey, and 



* Under the head of great snipe, in Daniel's " Rural Sports" 

 (vol. iii., p. 182, note), the author states that "a gentleman of 

 Yarmouth, in September, 1805, shot a snipe of the astonishing 

 weight of fourteen ounces," which is as hard to credit as the story 

 of the Norfolk woodcock that weighed twenty-seven ounces. 



