500 PLOVER TRIBE. 
its beak deep down into the mud and remaining motionless for a few seconds. 
If any subterranean movement is then detected, the beak is once more 
plunged in the direction indicated, and the hapless worm extracted. When 
flushed during Gaylight, the woodcock rises with a “whirr” of its wings, and 
occasionally uttering a snipe-like cry. It always flies much less rapidly than a 
snipe, and does not dart so much; while 
after a long journey its flight is so slow 
and flapping that in the Himalaya the 
writer has kicked up these birds from 
beneath his feet without at first realising. 
what they were. During the pairing- 
season male woodcocks forsake for a time 
their usual skulking habits, and fly slowly 
up and down in the open at morn and 
eve in a peculiar manner, at the same 
time uttering a characteristic cry. The 
term “rédding” is applied to this nuptial 
flight; and if two cocks thus engaged 
should chance to meet, a fight immediately 
ensues. Breeding very early in the season, 
the woodcock nests in a mere depression 
of the ground, which it lines abundantly 
with dry grass and leaves; the four eggs 
being generally laid in April. The nest is 
usually situated among dead fern, with the colours of which the plumage of the 
old birds harmonises. The young are at times carried to a safer spot by their 
parent, who takes them one by one between her thighs, and partially supports 
them by the beak. 

ero 
a 
WOODCOCK AND NEST. 

Under this title Mr. Seebohm groups a small number of species 
characterised by possessing longitudinal head-markings, and more 
than sixteen tail-feathers; the tibia being occasionally feathered to the ankle- 
joint, while the inner webs of the primaries are either plain, or have the bars 
confined to their terminal portions. Of these, the solitary snipe (S. solitaria), which 
breeds in Turkestan and the Himalaya, visiting India in winter, and represented 
by a variety in Eastern Siberia and Japan, may be distinguished by the white 
streaks on the outer borders of the seapulars; the usual number of tail-feathers 
being apparently eighteen. It inhabits bare, treeless districts. Another member 
is the wood-snipe (S. nemorivaga), of the Himalaya, India, and Burma, which has 
the habits of a woodeock, and may be recognised by the shortest secondary quills 
projecting more than half an inch beyond the longest of the primary coverts,—a 
character indicating limited flying-powers; while the tibia is usually feathered to 
the joint. The small pintail snipe (S. stenwra), which breeds as far north as the 
Arctic Circle from the Yenisei to the Pacific, and winters in India, China, Burma, 
Malayana, ete., is characterised by its twenty-six tail-feathers, of which the 
eight outermost on each side are very narrow, although gradually increasing in 
width. 
Aberrant Snipe. 
