112 British Birds, with their Nests and Eggs. 



Seventy couple to one gun in a day is, I believe, the largest known bag in Britain : 

 this was made by Lord Leicester, at Holkbam. But in India tbis would formerly 

 (not nowadays) have been tliongbt nothing very unusual. 



The Snipe has gained a variety of names from a peculiar habit it has — 

 "heather-bleat" in Scotland, "moor-lamb" in Lincolnshire, "horsgok" in Denmark, 

 "hrossagaukr" in Iceland (both of which last mean "horse-cuckoo"), "chevre- volant" 

 in France, "himmelsgeiss" in Germany— all gained by what we call the "drumming" 

 of the Snipe, the singular neighing or bleating sound which it makes on the wing 

 in the breeding season. When so doing, the bird, presumably the male, flies in 

 large circles, at a considerable height. There are two stages in the performance: 

 during the first movement the bird gradually ascends with full wing-strokes, and 

 quite silently, or uttering at intervals the usual note it does when flushed ; in the 

 second movement it gradually descends, with short tremulous beats of the wings, 

 accompanied by the loud bleating, or drumming sound, which is audible at a great 

 distance, even when the performer is so high in the air as to be invisible; after 

 a few seconds the rapid ascending movement is repeated, then the descending 

 bleat, and so da capo for an hour or more. I cannot perceive that the noise is 

 uttered more commonly when the bird is flying against the wind, or with it — there 

 seems to be no difference in this respect, and I watched a bird in the Cambridge- 

 shire fens last year with the special object of observing this — it certainly drummed 

 in any part of the large circle it was describing, sometimes head, sometimes tail, 

 towards the wind. I have mentioned this thus precisely because Abel Chapman 

 states that the Snipe drums head to wind only (" Bird-Life of the Borders," 

 p. 28-9). Opinions differ widely as to the means by which this curious sound 

 is produced. Meves declared that the tail feathers were the instrument, and 

 claimed to have produced it artificially by the Snipe's tail feathers fastened to 

 the end of a long stick and swung through the air. Others hold that the 

 tremulous motion of the tense wing- feathers is the agency; a third theory is that 

 the sound is vocal. The reader is at liberty to take his choice. I incline to the 

 last, from analogy. I have seen the Great Snipe go through exactly the same 

 evolutions at the nest, including the tremulous wings on the descending move- 

 ment, and in perfect silence ; I have watched the Wood, the Green, the Broad- 

 billed Sand Pipers, the Kentish Plover, Temminck's and the Little Stint, and 

 the Red-necked Phalarope, go through the same movements also, at the nest, 

 but in these cases the noise which accompanied the descending stage of the 

 performance was unmistakeably vocal. 



With regard to the migrations of Snipe, it is difficult to say much that is 

 precise, for they seem to be guided b}' the weather at the time, and by no 



