COMMON SNIPE. 243 



Few birds are more solitary in their habits than the Snipes ; although fifty 

 couple or more have been known to fall to one gun in a single day, I 

 have never seen or heard of a flock of Snipe. It often happens that on one 

 of their favourite marshes Snipe may be abundant one day, whilst on the 

 next not a bird can be found ; but on the marsh itself they are put up here 

 and there at some distance from each other ; and observers who have been 

 fortunate enough to remark them on migration say that they travel singly 

 or at most in pairs. Unless disturbed, the Snipe is rarely seen on the wing 

 during the day ; it migrates at night, and feeds principally at dusk. It is 

 remarkably skulking in its habits, and is essentially a swamp-bird, delight- 

 ing in sedge, rushes, aud the coarsest grass, and prefers those parts of the 

 plain or plateau where all three are to be found. If there be nothing but 

 sedge, the water is probably too deep for the short legs of the Snipe ; and if 

 there be only grass, the ground will generally be too hard for its soft, sen- 

 sitive bill. The point of a Snipe's bill is hard, but the subterminal portion 

 is soft, and after death dries up into a reticulated surface, which represents 

 the walls of cells from which proceed nerves, by which the bird feels for its 

 food in the soft mud. The footprints of a Snipe on the mud are surrounded 

 with holes, where it has probed the ground in search of food. It eats 

 insects of all sorts, worms, the larvse of water-beetles &c., slugs, and small 

 shell-fish ; and it is said that roots are sometimes found in its stomach, which 

 also contains a few small stones to assist in digestion. Neither the sand 

 of the sea-shore nor the mud-banks exposed at low water in the estuaries of 

 rivers have any attraction for the Snipe. Its haunts are the same in 

 winter as in summer, hence it does not change the colour of its dress with 

 the seasons. At all times of the year it trusts for its safety during the day 

 to the security of the cover of sedge or rush, only venturing out on the 

 short grass or on the exposed banks of a pond or a stream under cover 

 of twilight. Except on migration, it skulks in the swamps during the day, 

 and when disturbed rises very suddenly from the ground, with little or no 

 whirr of wing, but frequently uttering a long-drawn, harsh note, some- 

 thing like the syllable skaych. On the wing it goes like the wind for the 

 first few seconds, in a zigzag course, like a hare pursued by the hounds, 

 but soon flies steadily and drops down into cover again when it imagines 

 itself out of danger. 



In the breeding-season the note of the Snipe is a rapidly-uttered tyik- 

 tyuk, each syllable accompanied by a depression of the head. This note is 

 common to both sexes ; but perhaps the most interesting fact connected 

 with the history of the Snipe is the well-known drumming of the male bird 

 during the pairing-season. He may then be seen in broad daylight high 

 in air, wheeling round and round in enormous circles, flying diagonally 

 upwards with rapid beat of wings, then swooping down an imaginary inclined 

 plane with half-expanded and visibly vibrating wings, but with outspread tail, 



