AMERICAN SNIPE. 323 



acquire its full growth before winter, and its length differs in different 

 apparently full grown individuals, by half an inch or even three-fourths. 

 They seem to feed at first on minute insects collected on the surface 

 of the mires, or amid the grass and moss ; but as they grow older, and 

 the bill becomes firmer and larger, they probe the ground like their 

 parents, and soon become expert at this operation, introducing the bill 

 at every half inch or so of the oozy mire, from which they principally 

 obtain their food. In the Middle States, this Snipe, however, has been 

 found breeding in meadows, as well as in the State of Maine ; and it also 

 nestles in the mountainous districts of these parts of the Union. I never 

 had the good fortune to meet with a nest in Pennsylvania, although I 

 have known several instances of a pair breeding not far from Mill Grove 

 on the Perkioming. 



In the Western Country this bird arrives from the north early in Oc- 

 tober, alighting in the low meadows watered by warm springs, and along 

 the borders of ponds and small secluded rivulets, sometimes in the corn 

 fields after a continuance of rainy weather, but never in the woods or any 

 place from which it cannot easily make its escape when approached. In 

 Kentucky it often remains all winter, and is at times very abundant. 

 Farther south, it is more plentiful, especially in the lower parts of Loui- 

 siana, where it is named " cache cache" by the Creoles, and over the 

 whole country between that State and the Carolinas. During winter, it 

 is not uncommon in Louisiana to meet with it in flocks of considerable 

 numbers, as is also the case in South Carolina, where the grounds of the 

 rice-planter afford it abundance of food. In some fields well known to 

 my Charleston friends, as winter retreats of the snipe, it is shot in great 

 numbers. At times it is so much less careful about concealing itself than 

 at others, that it is not at all uncommon to see it walking about over its 

 wet feeding-gromids, and on such occasions many are killed. In such 

 places I have found these birds by fifties and hundreds in fields of a few 

 acres. At the first shots, dozens in succession would take to wing, each 

 emitting its cry of wau-aik, after which they would rise in the air, gra- 

 dually collect, fly round a few times to the distance of some hundred 

 yards, and returning pitch towards the ground, and alight, wth the velo- 

 city of an arrow, not many yards from the spot where they had previously 

 been. In a few minutes they would all disperse, to seek for food. So 

 much are they at times attached to particular spots, that the sportsmen 

 continue to shoot them until their number is reduced to a few, which 



