248 MANUAL FOE YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 



unfledged and incapable of taking wing ; but in July cock- 

 shooting, in Orange County, I have more than once shot 

 young birds of the season, with the pin-feathers not yet 

 fully grown, which must have been bred on the ground. 



In wild, windy weather, particularly on their first 

 coming, and when the season is uncertain with interrupted 

 night frosts and hail showers, snipe often rise in whisps, 

 as it is termed, or little knots of ten or twenty birds, 

 when they invariably fly wild and high, and often leave 

 the ground entirely, soaring up and going away directly 

 out of sight. 



At a later period, when the weather is hot, and when 

 the breeding season is at hand, the birds have a trick of 

 rising perpendicularly into the air, and then letting them- 

 selves drop a hundred feet plumb down through the air, 

 with the quills of their wings set edgewise, making a 

 strange sound, which once heard cannot be mistaken, and 

 is known as drumming. This is, beyond doubt, an amor- 

 ous manifestation, like the strutting and cooing of pigeons, 

 the shuffling and wing-fluttering of game-cocks, and the 

 tail-displaying of peacocks and turkeys ; nor do I know a 

 sound of worse omen to the sportsman ; since, at these 

 moments, the birds are inconceivably wild, calling' one 

 another up, until all in the neighborhood, or within sound, 

 are wheeling and gyrating in the air like tumbler pigeons, 

 and playing all sorts of fantastic tricks such as well-disposed 

 snipe would never dream of at any other season, sometimes 

 alighting on rail-fences or tall trees, and chattering like 

 hens which have laid an egg. 



At such times, there is little or no hope for it, except 



