SNIPE 



' bip, bip, bipbip, bipbiperere, biperere,' and when within one hundred 

 paces, if the night is still, he begins to hear other peculiar sounds. . . . 

 Whilst producing these notes the bird is in ecstasy, and raises and 

 spreads its tail like a fan, the outer tail feathers showing in the half- 

 darkness like two white patches." Dresser's remarks seem to have 

 been based on observations of the Norwegian ornithologist Collett, who 

 remarks 1 that in addition to the "bibiperere" notes the bird also 

 makes sounds like the smacking of the tongue, produced by striking 

 the mandibles smartly and rapidly together. He then jumps on to 

 a tussock of grass, puffing out his feathers, spreading his tail, and 

 drooping his wings before the female, the while uttering a tremulous 

 " shirrr." Seebohm, 2 who studied this bird at first hand in the valley of 

 the Kureika, N.E. Russia, remarked also that these birds are gregarious 

 during the breeding season. " Late one evening," he tells us, "... 

 drifting down the Petchora, we came upon a large party . . . making 

 curious noises with their bills in the long grass on the banks of the 

 river." Their manner of producing these noises, he discovered later, 

 was accompanied by strange movements of the head and neck, the 

 latter being stretched out, and the head thrown back " almost upside 

 down " after the fashion of a white stork when " clattering " the 

 beak being the while rapidly opened and shut, and emitting a sound 

 like that produced by running the finger along the edge of a comb. 

 This outburst was sometimes preceded by a short flight, or by spreading 

 the wings and tail. On the subject of this flight, which seems to be 

 a part of the performance overlooked by Dresser, Seebohm tells us 

 that he came on as many as half a dozen on the wing at once, but 

 their flight was very short. He succeeded in shooting ten of those 

 thus engaged, and all proved to be males. 



Had Seebohm been more anxious to observe than to shoot, he 

 might have anticipated the interesting observations of the Russian 

 naturalist Alpheraky, 3 who seems to have collected more evidence as 



1 Yarrell, British Birds, vol. iii. p. 336. * Birds of Siberia, p. 358. 



3 Field, 1906, p. 1075. 



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