

THE TRUE SNIPES. 217 



found in the Mediterranean and North Africa, extending to the 

 Azores, Madeira, the Canary Islands and Senegambia, as well 

 as the Nile Valley, and as far as Aden. 



Habits. The Snipe is a bird which is seldom seen in the day 

 unless flushed from its marshy lair, and I only once remember 

 having seen one flying of its own accord in full daylight. Off the 

 beach at Gorleston, near Yarmouth, I was wandering one morn- 

 ing in September, 1885, with a gun under my arm in case any 

 bird came along which I might want for the British Museum, 

 when I saw a cluster of small birds, apparently Dunlins or Stints, 

 flying over the sea at a short distance from the shore. As they 

 came nearer, I could make out a larger bird flying in front, and 

 evidently acting as leader to the smaller fry, of which there 

 were, perhaps, a dozen. As they passed by me at a consider- 

 able distance I aimed at the foremost bird, which was about a 

 yard or two in front of the others, thinking that it must be a 

 Knot. My shot told, and the poor bird left his followers to shift 

 for themselves, and turned shorewards, falling on a grassy cliff. 

 When I had ascended the latter I was considerably astonished 

 to find that my victim was a Common Snipe, which had been 

 acting as guide, philosopher, and friend to a party of unsophis- 

 ticated Dunlins at noonday. 



Pairs of Snipe, travelling in company, have been observed 

 crossing the sea on migration, but, as a rule, the bird is found 

 alone, though a goodly company may be in close proximity. 

 Once, no doubt, the marshes in the west of London abounded 

 with Snipe, and close to what is now Bedford Park I have my- 

 self seen a Snipe shot within the last ten years, some day to be 

 reckoned as great a marvel as the Ring-Ouzels from Turnham 

 Green and the Nightingale from the country round Bayswater, 

 of which birds specimens are in the British Museum. In the 

 water-meadows and common-lands of the Thames Valley, left 

 moist after the floods, I have known plenty of Snipe to be killed 

 quite close to London, and the way in which they will cling to a 

 locality, day after day, after having been constantly shot at, is 

 as surprising as the way in which they will suddenly disappear 

 from a place in which they have been plentiful the day before, 

 without any apparent reason. Every sportsman knows how, in 

 a favourite spot in the water-meadows, Snipe are almost sure to 

 be found in favourable weather, and how, without being actu- 



