H. WORMALD : A SNIPE AND ITS HABITS. 251 



first fortnight, the food then consisting of small worms, 

 of which he devoured an enormous quantity. As soon, 

 however, as he had learnt to feed himself he took to 

 maggots, and any small animaculse that he could find 

 while probing at the edge of a pond, or in mud which I 

 dug up and gave to him in a pan. 



The first signs of feathers appeared on the shoulders 

 on May 17th. The feathering was very rapid, the feathers 

 of the tail and the back of the neck being the last to 

 appear. Fig. 2 shows the bird at this stage of develop- 

 ment. By the beginning of July he was quite grown up 



•4^: 







I: I 



Fig. 2. — As he appeared at the end of May. 

 {Drawn by H. Wormald.) 



and fully feathered. During the last week in September 

 he commenced his first moult by losing his tail-feathers, 

 the two outer ones being the last to fall. The moult 

 was completed about a month later. On October 18th my 

 brother winged a Common Snipe, which I took home alive, 

 and this bird I take to be also a bird of the year, owing 

 to the fact that it (I do not know the sex) was in exactly 

 the same state of moult as my hand-reared bird. Adults 

 begin to moult during the end of July, and I have 

 constantly seen them during the first week in August 

 with their wing-feathers in full moult, but immature birds. 



