Periodical 
visitant. 
Food. 
126 GRALLATORES, SCOLOPAX. SNIPE. 
covered, scarcely equalling: by one half the bulk of the 
Common Snipe; its:length averaging about eight inches, and 
its usual weight, when in full condition, seldom exceeding 
two ounces and a quarter. With us. it is a periodical winter 
visitant, its summer retreat being in much higher northern 
latitudes, where:it nidificates‘and breeds in the vast swamps 
of those desolate regions. The first flights generally arrive 
as early asin the second week of, September, as I have sel- 
dom failed to: meet: with it in a favourite haunt between the 
14th and 20th of that month. Its stay is usually prolonged 
to the end of February, or beginning of March, according 
to the rigour of the season; it then quits us for polar lati- 
tudes, and the desertion seems, in the case of this bird, to 
be very general, I may say universal, for 1 have not  suc- 
ceeded hitherto’ in detecting a single instance of its remain- 
ing during the summer, or breeding in any of our fens; nor 
do any of our writers on this branch of natural history men- 
tion an authenticated. fact of this kind. I haye, indeed, been 
told at different times of Jack Shipes to be seen in certain 
bogs, as well as their nests and eggs,—but these, in every 
instance, proved on investigation to be Dunlins or Purres 
(Tringa variabilis of 'Temmincx); which is a bird nearly 
of the same size, and in its summer plumage, and on the 
wing, very liable to: be mistaken for the Judcock. The re- 
sort of this Snipe is always to the softest and most miry 
parts of bogs, where vegetation has made but partial ad- 
vances; and in the uncovered places of these it probes for 
its food, consisting of small aquatic worms and insects, and 
its bill (which measures about one inch and a half in length) 
possesses the same delicacy of feeling, being furnished with 
the same nervous and muscular apparatus as the other spe- 
cies of this genus. This bird sits very close, and will allow 
itself to be almost trodden upon before it can be forced upon 
wing; its flight then is more direct, and without the twist- 
ing evolutions of the common species, resembling that of the 
Woodcock, when flying in open space, the wings being con- 
