500 



PLOVER TRIBE. 



its beak deep down into the mud and remaining motionless for a few seconds. 

 If any subterranean movement is then detected, the beak is once more 

 plunged in the direction indicated, and the hapless worm extracted. When 

 flushed during daylight, the woodcock rises with a " whirr " of its wings, and 

 occasionally uttering a snipe-like cry. It always flies much less rapidly than a 



snipe, and does not dart so much; while 

 after a long journey its flight is so slow 

 and flapping that in the Himalaya the 

 writer has kicked up these birds from 

 beneath, his feet without at first realising 

 what they were. During the pairing- 

 season male woodcocks forsake for a time 

 their usual skulking habits, and fly slowly 

 up and down in the open at morn and 

 eve in a peculiar manner, at the same 

 time uttering a characteristic cry. The 

 term "roding" is applied to this nuptial 

 flight; and if two cocks thus engaged 

 should chance to meet, a fight immediately 

 ensues. Breeding very early in the season, 

 the woodcock nests in a mere depression 

 of the ground, which it lines abundantly 

 with dry grass and leaves ; the four eggs 

 being generally laid in April. The nest is 

 usually situated among dead fern, with the colours of which the plumage of the 

 old birds harmonises. The young are at times carried to a safer spot by their 

 parent, who takes them one by one between her thighs, and partially supports 

 them by the beak. 



Under this title Mr. Seebohm groups a small number of species 

 characterised by possessing longitudinal head-markings, and more 

 than sixteen tail-feathers ; the tibia being occasionally feathered to the ankle- 

 joint, while the inner webs of the primaries are either plain, or have the bars 

 confined to their terminal portions. Of these, the solitary snipe (S. solitaria), which 

 breeds in Turkestan and the Himalaya, visiting India in winter, and represented 

 by a variety in Eastern Siberia and Japan, may be distinguished by the white 

 streaks on the outer borders of the scapulars ; the usual number of tail-feathers 

 being apparently eighteen. It inhabits bare, treeless districts. Another member 

 is the wood-snipe (S. nemorivaga), of the Himalaya, India, and Burma, which has 

 the habits of a woodcock, and may be recognised by the shortest secondary quills 

 projecting more than half an inch beyond the longest of the primary coverts, a 

 character indicating limited flying-powers ; while the tibia is usually feathered to 

 the joint. The small pintail snipe (S. stenura), which breeds as far north as the 

 Arctic Circle from the Yenisei to the Pacific, and winters in India, China, Burma, 

 Malay ana, etc., is characterised by its twenty - six tail - feathers, of which the 

 eight outermost on each side are very narrow, although gradually increasing in 

 width. 



WOODCOCK AND NEST. 



Aberrant Snipe. 



