Tf)e Wilson's 3nipe. 



By GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL. Ph.D. 



A 



STANCH. 



LTHOUGH almost the smallest of our 



game birds the snipe is one of the 



most highly prized. It is also, on 



account of its very wide distribution, perhaps 



4 better known to sportsmen than any other 



bird which they pursue. Breeding as it does 



on the very borders of the Arctic circle,. and 



extending its flights during the southern 



migration to the northern countries of South 



America, it occurs at one time or another 



of the year throughout the length and breadth 



of our land. The time was when good snipe 



shooting some time during the spring or fall 



could be had wherever favorable feeding 



grounds existed, but as this bird has been 



almost wholly overlooked by the game laws, and is shot at all times and seasons 



wherever found, the snipe to-day — except in certain favored localities — is becoming 



one of the rarest of our birds. 



Notwithstanding its wide distribution and the fact that it is known to almost all 



sportsmen, the snipe has few local names. From its resemblance to the European 



species, with which, up to the time of Wilson, it was regarded as identical, it is almost 



universally known as "English," or "Jack" snipe. Mr. Gurdon Trumbull, in his most 



excellent and interesting work entitled : " Names and Portraits of Birds which interest 



Gunners," tells us that at different points in New Jersey and Maryland it is called 



"bog snipe" and "marsh snipe," obviously to distinguish it from the shore-inhabiting 



beach birds, which are also commonly called snipe. In an article contributed to the 



Century Magazine, in 1883, I wrote: "Few of our birds are so poor in local names as 



this one, for it is almost everywhere known either as the ' English ' or the ' Jack ' 



snipe. Along the New England coast, however, it has an appellation which is rather 



curious. As the bird arrives about the same time as the shad, and is found on the 



meadows along the rivers where the nets are hauled, the fishermen when drawing their 



seines at night often start it from its moist resting place and hear its sharp cry as it 



flies away through the darkness. They do not know the cause of the sound and from 

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