304 WOODCOCK AND SNIPE 



cult to describe none who have heard them will deny. To me the 

 noise produced would be more correctly described as " humming." 

 If one happens to be near, the sound is in a higher key, and a like- 

 ness can certainly be detected to the bleating of a goat. As a rule 

 this music begins soon after daylight, and may be continued for a 

 couple of hours or so. At midday it begins again, and is sustained 

 for a like period. Just before sunset it is once more resumed, and 

 lasts till the twilight has given place to darkness. Often, indeed, 

 when fine, especially on moonlight nights, this concert will be kept 

 up, intermittently, throughout the night, as many as a dozen birds 

 contributing at a time. 



As to the means whereby this strange piping music is produced, 

 opinions at one time differed widely. But there is now no need to 

 traverse all the theories which have been advanced since this matter 

 first engaged the serious attention of ornithologists. The solution of 

 the mystery is due, strangely enough, to an accident. The German 

 naturalist Naumann, some years ago, took up this problem, feeling 

 convinced that the sounds were not vocal. He surmised that they 

 might be due to the vibration of the wings, and to test his assumption 

 he fastened some of the primaries of a snipe to a stick and moved 

 them rapidly through the air, expecting to reproduce the sounds. 

 The experiment failed, and there, so far as he was concerned, the 

 matter ended. But in the published account of the experiment, by 

 some fortunate mischance tail feathers were stated to have been used 

 instead of primaries. The Swedish ornithologist Meves, a year or two 

 later, reading this account, tried the experiment himself, using, of 

 course, tail feathers, and at once solved the problem ! 



Later ornithologists, however, refused to accept this interpreta- 

 tion, and averred that the primary cause of the sounds was the 

 vibration of the wings, aided, perhaps, by the outspread tail. The 

 matter, however, was finally set at rest by some experiments of Dr. 

 Philip Bahr. He pointed out 1 that during the descent to which 



1 Proc. Zool. Soc., 1907, p. 12. 



