296 THE GAME BIEDS AND WILD FOWL 



may be witnessed at all hours of the day, but are most persistently and frequently 

 indulged in towards evening. The bird rises to a considerable height, often 

 uttering his note of tchih-tchah, tchik-tchah, or tyik-tyuh, tyih-tyuk, as he goes. 

 Then when at the zenith of his course, which may be almost if not quite beyond 

 the limits of human vision, he suddenly descends with great velocity on vibrating 

 wings and outspread tail, making the drumming noise. Sometimes this descent 

 is continued until the ground is reached, but more often the bird stays its course 

 at varying heights, the drumming ceases, and he flies off in another direction 

 uttering his monotonous tchik-tchak as he goes. Much difference of opinion has 

 been expressed concerning the " drumming" of the Snipe. Some writers assert 

 that the sound is a vocal one, others maintain that the vibration of the wings is 

 responsible for its production ; whilst others yet again hold that it is caused by 

 the rush of air through the outspread tail. Stejneger maintains that the sound 

 originates from the throat, a view of the question which was suggested to him by 

 the actions and voice of the Aleutian Sandpiper, which he observed sitting upon 

 a tussock with puffed plumage and pendant wings and producing a loud bleating 

 sound like that of the Common Snipe. The vocal organs must be dismissed, 

 because the Snipe has been heard to utter its love notes whilst drumming, 

 although this is exceptional. I am inclined to adopt Colonel Legge's explanation, 

 based as it was on much careful observation and experiment, which he minutely 

 described to me some years ago, and that is the drumming is produced by the 

 combined action of the wings and tail. He informed me (as he also published in 

 his magnificent work on the Birds of Ceylon) that the vibrations of sound were 

 exactly coincident with the beats of the wings, and that the air-waves are driven 

 by the powerful wing-beats through the expanded and rigid tail feathers. The 

 nest of the Common Snipe is usually placed in the centre or under the side of a 

 tuft or tussock of coarse grass and rush in the swamps. It is merely a slight 

 depression lined with dry grass and bits of dead aquatic herbage. The eggs are 

 four in number, and vary from buff of different shades to olive of different shades 

 in ground-colour, heavily and handsomely blotched and spotted with rich dark 

 brown, occasionally streaked with blackish-brown and with numerous large 

 underlying markings of pale brown and grey. They are pyriform and measure 

 on an average 1-6 inch in length by 11 inch in breadth. Incubation, principally 

 performed by the female, lasts from sixteen to twenty days. But one brood is 

 reared in the year. 



Diagnostic ciiaracters — Gallinago, with fourteen rectrices, with dark 

 streaks (not bars) on the breast, and with the axillaries white, more or less marked 

 with dark grey. Length, 10|- inches. Albinos and fawn-coloured varieties are 

 not uncommonly met with, especially in India. 



