32G THE BIRDS OF DEVOX. 



Many a meadow, formerly ornamented all over with rushes and fnll of 

 soft splashets, is now through subsoil drainage sound and dry, with not 

 an inch of ground left which could attract a Snipe. In old days there 

 was not a warm ditch by the side of a hedge which did not harbour in 

 the winter-time some half-dozen Snipe, and excellent shooting could be 

 had without going to the moors and marshes, where the birds would be 

 expected mostly to congregate. At the time to which our memory carries 

 us back, twenty-five or twenty-six couple could be had in a day on the 

 ]irauuton Marsh, and we knew of one sportsman and good Snipe-shot 

 who used to get his six hundred couple in the course of the season on 

 IJursdon Moor and the adjoining commons in the north-west corner of the 

 county around the " West Country " Inn. AVe have ourselves occasionally 

 found Snipe swarming in peaty turnip-fields on high ground in the late 

 autumn, so that we have killed them in firing at Partridges without 

 iutending it, a Snipe coming accidentally in line with the Partridge we 

 were shooting at. On Dartmoor we have enjoyed many years of Snipe- 

 shooting, and never found the birds numerous on the northern and north- 

 eastern portions of the Forest, which were the chief scenes of our rambles. 

 It required straight shooting, and a good amount of walking, to make a 

 bag of six or seven couple ; but in the month of September, before the 

 bogs became too wet, and when the weather was generally bright and 

 fine, the delightful scenery of the moor, and the pure elastic air, made 

 the walks most enjoyable, and we did not grumble if the bag was not 

 great. Later on in the season any one who pursues Snipe on Dartmoor 

 must be prepared for a wetting, for even when it is fine below, directly 

 the elevated grounds are reached, they will be found occupied by dense 

 rolUng mists and drizzling rain, so that shooting is rendered difficult, and 

 it is sometimes not easy, especially if the sportsman is without a compass, 

 to find the way off the moor wlien it is time to return homewards. After 

 lieavy rains the Snipe leave the bogs, and pass the day on the tops of the 

 liills, squatting by the sides of the small fur/.e-tum])s. We have some- 

 times seen flocks of a hundred or more passing overhead, and a tract of 

 the moor Avhich might one day be quite destitute of Snipe, will be found 

 the next, should there have been some change in the wind or weather, 

 tenanted by scores of the " scaping long-bills." In hard frosts, or in deep 

 snows, the Snipe, almost to a bird, leave the moor and descend to the 

 warm drains in the marshes beneath. In walking over the moor at the 

 end of April we have encountered numerous pairs of nesting-birds, and 

 have had the Snipe drumming in the air all round us. On nearly all the 

 rough moorlands in the north of the county Snipe still nest in greater or 

 less numbers, although there is not a tithe at the present day either of 

 the resident birds or of the migrating strangers arriving in the autumn 

 in comparison w ith the numbers of bygone years. We have occasionally 

 come across varieties of the Common Snipe, having shot the large red- 

 coloured Snipe, called by Mr. Gould Scolopax russata, close to Barnstaple, 

 and one day shot one with a white head, and with a good many small 

 white spots powdered over the back and shoulders. We have never come 

 across the melanistic variety, formerly called Sabine's Snipe, but know of 



