9 8 SNIPE SHOOTING 



wait for an evening which exactly suits them an evening usually 

 with a gentle east wind, not by any means brisk, bearing on their 

 quarter to speak in nautical phrase. There must be bright moon- 

 light preferably the clear frosty rays of the large round October 

 or ' hunters' moon ' ; the full orb of Wegdwegoos in the Indian tongue, 

 i.e. the moon of the fat month when game is at its prime. Snipe 

 are essentially nocturnal birds, and make all their long voyages, 

 and usually their casual trips as well, from feeding grounds to 

 retired meadows and back again, between sunset and sunrise. 



In their general grand migratory flight they are occasionally 

 known by some mischance to miss a moon, and may thus be a whole 

 month late and consequently suffer severely from bitter cold and 

 snowstorms. One backward spring quite a body arrived a month 

 before their due time, and doubtless many perished of starvation. 

 When fairly started on their long voyage of migration, they soar to 

 a vast height, and strike out in the thin atmosphere of their high 

 aerial plane at a pace which has been estimated at upwards of 

 sixty miles an hour. I have seen what looked like a waving 

 rope in the air, which, by the aid of powerful glasses, was found 

 to be a large body of arriving snipe seen against the dim greyness 

 of the autumn sky. While it remains true that the snipe seems 

 mostly to rejoice in the society of its kind, on occasion it can 

 be a solitary bird enough, and I once got on very familiar terms 

 with a lone bird, which took up its quarters near a warm spring 

 quite close to my country residence, which I forbore to fire at, only 

 too glad of this fine opportunity of observing at close quarters the 

 habits of so shy and interesting a creature. This snipe remained, 

 strange to say, long after his companions had left for a warmer 

 temperature. The last day I saw him was in mid-December, when 

 the heavy snows had cut down his feeding ground to a few square 

 feet, and he kept restlessly on the wing, in short circular flights, 

 for several successive hours. 



In the spring-time, and occasionally during the progress of the 

 summer, the male snipe is in the habit of mounting to a considerable 

 height above his favourite meadows, and darting downward sud- 

 denly with great velocity, making at each descent a low tremulous 

 and musical vibration, which is a good sound to listen to. The 

 passions of love and rivalry are finding their expression in graceful 

 air dances and sonorous wing beatings, not as in the case of most 

 birds by vocal strains, but by instrumental music which ' takes the 

 soul of these wild wastes with joy '. There are few sounds more 

 fascinating to the lover of the open than the wing music of the 

 breeding snipe, which once heard can never be mistaken for any 

 other sound in nature's realm. The sound kindles a train of sug- 



