The Zoologist — February, 1871. 2459 



convinced that these accomplishments were possessed by all the 

 heather bleaters of their own locality, without exception as to age 

 or sex ; others deriding the idea of musical and perching snipes as 

 the creation of some diseased brain. It is not a point for me to 

 settle, but knowing that sandpipers of various kinds may be 

 detected in the display of these accomplishments, and never having 

 seen them exhibited by a snipe, I cannot avoid a suspicion that 

 the advocates of this eccentric conduct may have mistaken one bird 

 for another. But now I have arrived at the snipe in Mr. Stevenson's 

 volume, and its habits are admirably set forth. I know the snipe 

 well as making a constant demand for "physick, physick" directly 

 he leaves his congenial marsh-bog; and I know him also as the 

 author of that mysterious drumming which has exhausted the 

 speculative powers of sportsmen and naturalists, and which has, I 

 believe, at length found a solution from the pen of Mr. Meves, as 

 recorded at p. 6244 of the ' Zoologist' for 1858. But I have never 

 been able to recognize him in either alleged character of songster 

 or percher. Let us hear Mr. Stevenson on the aerial evolutions of 

 the snipe. 



" Often have I watched by the half-hour together, till my eyes fairly 

 tired of looking up into the bright sunny sky, the strange ' play ' of the 

 snipes in spring and summer. Sometimes one only, at others several may 

 be seen at a considerable height, now curving upwards with a wide circling 

 flight, now rapidly falling from their highest pitch with quivering wings and 

 outspread tail, whilst simultaneously with the downward movement, and 

 then only, a tremulous buzzing sound falls upon the ear, which ceases the 

 moment that the bird, recovering itself, ascends once more. The same 

 performance is repeated again and again, sometimes for hours, and occa- 

 sionally the snipe takes so lofty a flight as to be scarcely visible to the naked 

 eye ; but in the final descent the flight is extremely rapid, and, making a 

 slight detour as it nears the ground, the bird drops abruptly into the 

 sheltering herbage of the marsh or reed-bed. From the earliest dawn this 

 sound, so peculiar to our marshy districts, and associated always with the 

 wail of the lapwing and the redshank's whistle, may be heard at intervals 

 throughout the day, but towards evening many more seem to indulge in 

 this resonant flight ; and still more strange is that buzzing in the air, if 

 heard after dark, with the birds of course invisible even in a starlit sky. I 

 was first aware of this nocturnal habit when staying near Horning Ferry, 

 in the middle of April, 1860 (an unusual number having, as before stated, 

 remained to breed in this county), but then, every evening, as late as nine 

 or ten o'clock at night, the noise of the snipes was as incessant and 



