322 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 



cate weapon with which nature has provided the snipe 

 for the capturing of its food. It therefore is appar- 

 ent that of all the wet lands there are only certain 

 parts which contain snipe food. 



Of the places which afford snipe food some are good 

 throughout the whole season, as, for instance, the 

 sloughs and marshes and parts of river valleys of the 

 prairie country wherein it makes its summer home. 

 Other places are but temporarily available, as lands 

 made soft and wet by heavy rains. Such places may 

 serve it well for many weeks, as in Louisiana and 

 Texas in the fall and winter months, during the rainy 

 season, which in those States is largely the equivalent 

 of winter. Again, the snipe may seek its food in places 

 which are quite wet, as in some of the large wet 

 marshes, and again, in some other sections, it may 

 make its haunts on upland so firm that the hunter may 

 walk thereon pleasantly and dry-shod. 



While the woodcock, its long-billed confrere, is a 

 bird of the covert, the snipe is a bird of the open. On 

 these birds nature lays a more severe restriction con- 

 cerning a late stay in the North than she does on any 

 other game bird, for a snipe or woodcock attempting 

 to gain a subsistence in a frozen country is in a pa- 

 thetic situation indeed. 



Its food is said to be larvae, tender roots of plants, 

 and worms, which it secures by boring, and also such 

 insects and other edible food as it can secure on top 

 of the ground. 



To the local sportsman the snipe's habits in the 



