THE GAME BIRDS OF INDIA, BURMA AND CEYLON. 577 



remains on the ground The male bird utters a soft, 



almost warbling note, which is accompanied by a peculiar snapping 

 sound caused by striking the mandibles together several times in 

 quick succession. If a person approaches one of their humming- 

 places he can hear at some distance the low note : ' bip, bip, 

 bipbip, bip-biperere, biperere;' and when within 100 paces, if the 



night is still, he begins to hear other peculiar sounds 



Whilst producing these notes the bird is in ecstacy and raises and 

 spreads his tail like a fan, the outer tail-feathers showing in the 

 half darkness like two white patches." 



Dr. Bahr conjectures that these sounds are vocal, but he has 

 shown (vide G. coelestis) that the drumming of the Common Snipe 

 can be produced, under certain circumstances, on the ground, and 

 it therefore seems possible that the Great Snipe also " drums" by 

 some mechanical vibration of his tail-feathers. 



Seebohm says that this snipe " makes its nest in long grass, but 

 more often in the middle of a hillock of sedge or grasses. A small 

 quantity of moss or dead grass is placed as a lining to the depression, 

 where its four eggs are laid." 



" The eggs of the Great Snipe are very handsome, and vary in 

 ground colour from pale greyish buff (sometimes with the faintest 

 possible green tinge) to pale brownish buff, and are spotted and 

 blotched with rich dark brown and paler brown and with underly- 

 ing markings of purplish-brown and grey. Most of the blotches 

 are distributed round the largest part of the egg, often in an oblique 

 direction, and many of them are confluent. Some eggs have the 

 large end covered with a network of streaks, but more often only 

 a few lines are seen. The underlying markings are large, nu- 

 merous and very conspicuous. 



I have an extremely handsome clutch of three eggs of 0. major 

 in my collection taken in Denmark on the 14th June 1874. The 

 ground colour is a bright pinkish stone colour blotched all over 

 the surface with very large blotches of vandyke brown, spme 

 bright and clear, others almost black ; the sub-surface marks are of 

 the same description and nearly as large but one of a lavender and 

 purple grey colour and rather less numerous. 



When newly taken, these eggs must have been extraordinarily 



