THE AMERICAN SNIPE. 97 
It appears, then, that the coming and stay of the com- 
mon snipe in our districts, in spring, is very uncertain 
and dependent on the state and steadiness of the weather. 
Some seasons, they will stay for weeks on the moist, 
muddy flats among the young and succulent herbage, 
growing fat and lazy, lying well to the dog, and afford- 
ing great sport. Sometimes they will merely alight, feed, 
rest, and resume their flight, never giving the sportsman 
a chance even of knowing that they have been, and are 
gone, except by their chalkings and borings where they 
have fed. Again, at other seasons, they will lie singly, 
or in scattered whisps on the uplands, in fallow fields, 
even among stunted brushwood, lurking perdu all day, 
and resorting to the marshes by night, leaving the traces 
of their presence in multitudes, to perplex the sportsman, 
who, perhaps, beats the ground for them, day after day, 
only to find that they were, but are not. 
This variance in the habit of the snipe it is, which 
makes him so hard a bird to kill; for, although he is per- 
plexing from his rapid and twisting flight to a novice, I 
consider him, to a cool old hand, as easy a bird to kill as 
any that flies. The snipe invariably rises against or 
across wind, and in doing so hangs for an instant on the 
air before he can gather his way ; that instant is the time 
in which to shoot him, and that trick of rising against 
wind is his bane with the accomplished shot and sports- 
man, for by beating down the wind, keeping his brace of 
dogs quartering the ground before him, across the wind, 
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