The Wilson Snipe 



Taken near Santa Barbara 



'JACK" AS THE GUNNER SEES HIM 



Photo by the A ulhor 



prefer to think of the Jack-snipe, but rather as a member of society. 

 For Jack is an ardent lover, a devoted husband, and a resourceful father; 

 and Mrs. Jack, no less, is possessed of all the domestic virtues. Let me 

 take the reader to Snipeville. Shall it be an open, sunny swamp in 

 Owens Valley? The date is the 21st of May. The air is full of hooting 

 males (say, three or four), a challenge for proper birdmen to heave to for 

 the night. As we cast about for a possible camping site, my attention is 

 arrested by a solicitous bird who is "yelping" from the ground. The 

 notes are dissyllables, pe chep' pe chep' pe chep', endlessly iterative, and 

 uttered earnestly for minutes at a time. I can see the bird's mandibles 

 playing rhythmically, and he sways his head slowly from side to side as 

 he pipes. After two long rounds he takes to a leisure wing and so joins 

 the merry company of cavorting hooters. In the language of Tarn o' 

 the Scoots, Junior: "Hoot, mon, but it was an awesome sicht to see 

 the auld bird ootlined against the jaggedest Sierras, the while he win- 

 nowed the air with his pinions and quavered for the delectation of his 

 lady love." She, poor dear, was enjoying a little refection of worms 

 while her lord wailed and hurtled aloft. I saw her eating hard by, while 

 the male bird quitted the earth. Food must have been very abundant 

 in this particular bog, for though she prodded and gobbled most vigor- 

 ously, the lady did not require to leave the space of a square foot in 

 fifteen minutes' prodding. 



But the hooters themselves demand early attention. Courtship is at 

 its height, and these aviating Romeos are staging a flying circus. Each, 



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