THE RED-BREASTED SNIPE. s 



the Jack's habits. It is, however, less difficult to shoot than the "full" Snipe, 

 as the Common Snipe is often called; it usually rises well within range, and flies 

 less erratically. Moreover, as is well known, the Jack is never thin. When a 

 long frost has reduced the full Snipe to skin and bone, a Jack's bones are 

 always comfortably covered. This is probably due to its particular affection for 

 springs, and little running drains, which rarely freeze. Jack Snipe begin to 

 appear with us about the middle or end of September, and leave in April; some 

 few, as above stated, remaining later, or even through the summer, but this is 

 very exceptional. The food of the Jack Snipe consists of small insects, larvae, 

 &c. ; it feeds chiefly in the evening and early morning, and I have very rarely 

 found anything recognizable in the digestive canal, from only having dissected 

 Jacks shot during the day; the digestion of birds, it should be remembered, is a 

 very rapid process. The Jack Snipe at its breeding grounds goes through the 

 same aerial manoeuvres as the Common Snipe, the sound produced being com- 

 pared by John Wolley to "the cantering of a horse in the distance over a hard 

 hollow road"; elsewhere he calls it a "remarkable hammering noise." Very few 

 of us have "been there," or have any materials for forming an opinion whether 

 this noise is vocal or instrumental. Wolley's account (see Hewitson's "Eggs of 

 British Birds," vol. ii, p. 356) is well worth looking up. 



Family SCOL OP A CIDAL. 



RED-BREASTED SNIPE. 



Macrorhamphus griseus, GMEL. 



N American occasional visitor to our shores, one of a group of Sandpipers- 

 closely allied to the genus Totanus, but which have an accidental (or perhaps 

 functional) resemblance in their bills to the Snipes, and which Seebohm named 

 therefore the "Snipe-billed Sandpipers." The present species (which is called 



A 



