WILSON'S SNIPE. 173 



seen in the month of February, frequenting springs and boggy 

 thickets ; others proceed along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, 

 and even penetrate into the equatorial regions. 



By the second week in March, flocks of Wilson's Snipe begin 

 to revisit the marshes, meadows, and low grounds of the Mid- 

 dle States, and soon after they arrive in New England. In 

 mild and cloudy weather, towards evening, and until the last 

 rays of the setting sun have disappeared from the horizon, we 

 hear, as in the North of Europe, the singular tremulous mur- 

 murings of the Snipes, making their gyratory rounds so high in 

 the air as scarcely to be visible to the sight. This humming, 

 or rather flickering and somewhat wailing, sound has a great 

 similarity to the booming of the Night Hawk {Caprimulgus) , 

 but more resembles the sound produced by quickly and inter- 

 ruptedly blowing into the neck of a large bottle than the whir- 

 ring of a spinning-wheel. But however difficult and awkward 

 may be our attempts to convey any adequate idea of this quail- 

 ing murmur, it seems to be, to its agent, an expression of 

 tender feeling or amatory revery, as it is only uttered at the 

 commencement and during the early part of the pairing sea- 

 son, while hovering over those marshes or river meadows 

 which are to be the cradle and domicile of their expected pro- 

 geny, as they have already been of themselves and their mates. 

 This note is probably produced by an undulatory motion of 

 air in the throat while in the act of whirling flight, and ap- 

 pears most distinct as the Snipe descends towards the ground. 

 However produced, the sound and its originators are com- 

 monly so concealed by the fast-closing shades of night, and 

 the elevation from whence it issues in cloudy weather, that the 

 whole seems shrouded in mystery. My aged maternal parent 

 remembered, and could imitate with exactness, this low, wailing 

 murmur, which she had for so many years heard over the 

 marshes of my native Ribble, in the fine evenings of spring, 

 when all Nature seemed ready to do homage for the bounties 

 of the season ; and yet at the age of seventy, the riddle had 

 not been expounded with satisfaction. 



Over the wide marshes of Fresh Pond, about the middle of 



