154 Poachers and Poaching. 



curlew as it hovers over the lights. Among the 

 fowl that are driven down by stress of weather 

 are wisps of snipe, and, although comparatively 

 small, no game is dearer to the heart of the 

 inland sportsman or shore-shooter. Four species 

 of snipe are found in Britain, though one of 

 these, the red-breasted or brown snipe, can only 

 be looked upon as a rare straggler. The remain- 

 ing three species are the common snipe, the 

 great snipe, and the jack snipe. All snipe have 

 a peculiar zig-zag flight, and this peculiarity 

 renders them most difficult to kill. Bagging the 

 first snipe constitutes an era in life of every 

 sportsman, and is an event always remembered. 

 Another characteristic of birds of this genus is 

 the beauty and design of their plumage. The 

 ground colour is streaked and pencilled in a 

 remarkable manner with straw-coloured feathers, 

 which enables the bird to conform in a mar- 

 vellous manner to the bleached stalks of the 

 aquatic herbage which constitutes its haunt. 

 The arrangement is somewhat similar to that of 

 the woodcock lying among its dead oak-leaves. 



The common snipe is one of our well-known 

 marsh birds, although drainage and better farming 

 have not only restricted its breeding haunts, but 

 have caused it to be less numerous. Still it 

 probably breeds in every county in England, and 

 our resident birds are augmented in numbers by 

 bands of immigrants which annually winter within 



