40 Sporting Sketches 



lows : Top of head, black, with three buff stripes ; 

 neck, buff, lined and spotted with black ; back, black, 

 feathers barred and margined with rufous and buff, 

 the latter giving a striped effect ; rump and upper 

 tail coverts, rufous, barred with black ; wings, sooty 

 black, feathers barred with rufous and margined 

 with white ; primaries, blackish, web of first white 

 nearly its length, edged with white at tip; tail, 

 usually of sixteen feathers, the three outer whitish 

 with narrow black bars, the others black with rufous 

 bar and tipped with pale buff ; chin and upper part 

 of throat, pale buff, lower throat and breast, buff, 

 spotted with sooty brown ; flanks, white, barred with 

 black ; abdomen, white ; under tail coverts, buff, 

 barred with sooty black ; bill, legs, and feet, green- 

 ish. Length, loj to nj inches; wing, about 5 

 inches ; tail, 2 J- inches ; bill, 2 J to 3 inches. 



Many sportsmen of the gray-headed brigade still 

 insist that, like the woodcock, the snipe lives by 

 what they term " suction." Better-informed people, 

 of course, know that both birds eat worms, and an 

 astonishing number of them, and that the worms 

 are secured mainly by probing (boring) for them 

 with the peculiarly sensitive bill, the upper mandible 

 having a very flexible tip by which the worm is felt, 

 seized, and drawn from the earth. By this, however, 

 is not meant that snipe and cock invariably bore for 

 their food. Both will take worms crawling upon 

 the surface, and both frequently feed in thickets and 

 on almost dry ground, where they secure the prey 

 by turning over fallen leaves. 



When migrating the snipe travels by night, and 

 while some excellent authorities have claimed that 



