PAIRING AND EARLY SONG 385 



pecker is often called is very familiar in the spring woods, and 

 begins to be heard in a complete form in February, if the season 

 is early and open. It is a shout rather than a song; but it seems 

 clearly to be a shout of gladness, and therefore closely akin to 

 song in spirit and origin. Yet if we startle a woodpecker as 

 it feeds on the ground under the winter hedgerows, it often 

 utters a cry which is merely its spring laugh cut down to two 

 or three notes, as it shoots up and undulates across the field. 

 Snipe begin to drum in mild seasons in the south of 

 England in the second or third week in February, when they 

 pair and settle down in the marshy fields where they nest 

 early in April. Their drumming or bleating note sounds 

 extremely like the baa of a young lamb, and is even closer 

 to the bleat of a kid. It is the snipe's equivalent for song, 

 though it is not produced vocally, but by the vibration of 

 the web of the two outer feathers of the tail. This is 

 peculiarly stiff, and produces the bleating note whenever the 

 snipe drops slanting downwards in the course of its long 

 flights over the nesting-ground. It winds swiftly about the 

 sky within a space of about a quarter of a mile, and every 

 few moments drops obliquely downwards, when the bleating 

 note is almost immediately heard. It ceases as soon as the 

 bird reaches the bottom of its descent, and again shoots up. 

 The sound has been reproduced by binding the snipe's outer 

 tail-feathers to the shaft of an arrow, and shooting it into the 

 air ; the sound began when it descended. It is remarkable 

 that while some American and African species of snipe drum 

 in the same way as the common snipe, great or double snipe 

 do not drum, but display before the hens much like the 

 blackcock. The jack snipe has yet another method of 

 nuptial expression. It makes in the air a sound described as 

 being like the galloping of a horse over a hard road ; and it is 

 thought that this is vocal, though the point is still undetermined. 



