96 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. 



liim. The country people say that if a snipe is left any time 

 in a crib, however fat when caught, he will get quite thin 

 from fright and his attempts to escape. 



This latter fact is curious, but quite credible, seeing how 

 under opposite circumstances this species of bird plumps up 

 with even a few hours good feeding after his autumn 

 migration or a period of frost starvation. 



Amongst reeds and rushes are sometimes to be found little 

 paths pattered smooth by moorhens and water rats running* 

 to and fro amongst the stems. Here, Sir Ralph Payne 

 Gallwey tells us, a springe for taking snipe, woodcock, and 

 other wildfowl, often used in Ireland, is made thus : Stick 

 a pliant wand of a yard and a half firmly into the ground, 

 bend it down till the ends of a short cross piece attached to 

 it, and which may be four inches long, catch in the notches 

 cut to receive them in two stout pegs driven firmly into the 

 ground, and showing a couple of inches above the surface. 

 Pass the fine wires that are attached to the cross stick over 

 a slight nick in the top of each peg, and place the running 

 nooses flat on the soil for snipes, edgeways for ducks and 

 teal. When a bird is snared, the little stick cross ways 

 between the uprights is freed at once, the wand flies, and 

 the victim is strangled. This is done so quickly and quietly 

 that the captive is not missed by his companions, though 

 dangling above them. He has found half a dozen duck, 

 teal, snipe, etc., thus strung up in a morning ! 



Such are some of the illegitimate devices tending to make 

 both snipe and their big relative, the woodcock, scarcer year 

 by year. No doubt there are more wholesale methods such 

 as the fen men's long nets which go over some fens, especially 

 near large towns, in the dusk of the evening, and frighten 

 away what snipe they do not secure. Possibly not quite so 

 much is done towards making these little wildfowl at home 

 in our waste lands as might be. There are, as said, scores 

 of places on many estates, even in the midlands, which by 

 a little preparation in the way of flooding a corner or two of 



