THE AMERICAN SNIPE. * 95 
founded than distinguished by the unscientific sports- 
man. 
The American bird has, however, two or three habits, 
during early spring-shooting, which I have never ob- 
served in the European species, nor seen noticed in any 
work of natural history ; the first of these is frequenting 
underwood and bushy covert abounding in springs and 
intersected by cattle-tracks, and occasionally even high 
woods, during wild, stormy, and dark weather, especially 
when snow-squalls are driving; and this is a habit of the 
‘bird meriting the attention of the sportsman, as in such 
weather, when he finds no birds on the open and unshel- 
tered marshes, he will do well to beat the neighboring 
underwoods, if any; and if not, the nearest swampy 
woodlands; by doing which he will oftentimes fill his 
bag when he despairs of any sport. The second habit is 
that of alighting, not unfrequently, on rail-fences, or 
stumps, and even on high trees, which I think I can 
safely assert that the European bird never does; and the 
third is the utterance, when in the act of skimming over 
the meadows, after soaring, bleating, and drumming for 
an hour at a stretch in mid air, of “a sharp reiterated 
chatter, consisting of a quick, jarring repetition of the 
syllables, Aeh-kek-keh-kek-kek, many times in succession, 
with arising and falling inflection, like that of a hen 
which has just laid an egg.” * 
There is no Jack Snivz in America, though many per- 
* “Prank Forrester’s Field Sports of North America,” vol. i. p. 161. 
