SNIPE 309 



duces sounds which all observers agree are hard to regard as vocal, 

 though there is no evidence to show that they are otherwise. The 

 first to bring us news of the breeding-grounds of the jack-snipe, and 

 of its behaviour at this time, was that enthusiastic egg-collector Wolley, 

 who had the great good fortune to discover the secret which this bird 

 had so long kept inviolate. The day, June 17, 1853, is a memorable 

 one in the annals of ornithology. He was out on the great marsh at 

 Muoniovara, egg-hunting, when his attention was arrested by a strange 

 and unknown note. His servant suggested it might proceed from 

 a capercaillie in the neighbouring forest, but he soon found it came 

 from a small bird careering at a wild pace high over the marsh. He 

 describes the note as the love-song of the jack-snipe, clear and 

 hollow, a quadruple note, not unlike the distant canter of a horse over 

 a hard hollow road, a weird note which Naumann likens to the click 

 of a death-clock. Naumann, it is remarked, never saw the bird in its 

 breeding-quarters, whence we may infer that these sounds are not 

 exclusively confined to the breeding season. Of its brooding habits 

 and the care of the young we know nothing. 



Of the courting habits of the great-snipe and jack-snipe our know- 

 ledge is very scanty ; still less of positive knowledge seems to have 

 been recorded of what we may call the everyday life of these birds. 

 Yarrell tells us that the great-snipe " prefers drier ground than its 

 congeners, and is found in dry grass fields, heather, potatoes, barley 

 layers, and turnips, and that its flight is steadier and heavier than that 

 of the common-snipe. Harting l similarly remarks, " It appears to seek 

 drier situations than does the common-snipe e.g., one shot by the 

 Earl of Huntingdon in a dry grass field near Mellerstain, Berwickshire, 

 . . . two on high ground, Malham, Yorkshire, Sept. 6, ... one on a 

 stubble at Stewarton, Ayrshire, Sept. 15, ... one in a piece of 

 potatoes on dry sand, Wilts, Sept. 23, ... one on a dry bean stubble 

 at Thorpe, Northants, . . . one in a field of clover, Sept. 3." All 

 these birds, it will be noted, were killed before hard weather had set 



1 Handbook of British Birds, p. 197. 



