340 



WILSON'S SNIPE. 



likely to be disturbed by man, and finds immediately around it an abundance 

 of food. The nest itself is a mere hollow in the moss, scantily inlaid with a 

 few grasses. The eggs, which, like those of many of the Tringas, are four, 

 and placed with the small ends together, measure one inch and five-eighths 

 by one and one-eighth, being pyriform, with the tip somewhat inflated. The 

 ground colour is a yellowish-olive, pretty thickly spotted and blotched with 

 light and dark umber, the markings increasing in size as they approach the 

 large end, where they form a circle. The young, like those of the Wood- 

 cock, leave the nests as soon as hatched, and so resemble those of the Com- 

 mon Snipe of Europe, Scolojjax Gallinago, that the same description 

 answers for both, they being covered with down of different tints of brown 

 and greyish-yellow. The bill is at this age short, very soft and easily bent 

 by the least pressure; nor does it acquire its full growth before winter, and 

 its length differs in different apparently full grown individuals, by half an 

 inch or even three-fourths. They seem to feed at first on minute insects 

 collected on the surface of the mires, or amid the grass and moss; but as they 

 grow older, and the bill becomes firmer and larger, they probe the ground 

 like their parents, and soon become expert at this operation, introducing the 

 bill at every half inch or so of the oozy mire, from which they principally 

 obtain their food. In the Middle States, this Snipe, however, has been 

 found breeding in meadows, as well as in the State of Maine; and it also 

 nestles in the mountainous districts of these parts of the Union. I never 

 had the good fortune to meet with a nest in Pennsylvania, although I have 

 known several instances of a pair breeding not far from Mill Grove on the 

 Perkioming. 



In the Western Country this bird arrives from the north early in October, 

 alighting in the low meadows watered by warm springs, and along the 

 borders of ponds and small secluded rivulets, sometimes in the corn-fields 

 after a continuance of rainy weather, but never in the woods or any place 

 from which it cannot easily make its escape when approached. In Kentucky 

 it often remains all winter, and is at times very abundant. Farther south, 

 it is more plentiful, especially in the lower parts of Louisiana, where it is 

 named "cache cache" by the Creoles, and over the whole country between 

 that State and the Carolinas. During winter, it is not uncommon in 

 Louisiana to meet with it in flocks of considerable numbers, as is also the 

 case in South Carolina, where the grounds of the rice-planter afford it 

 abundance of food. In some fields well known to my Charleston friends, as 

 winter retreats of the Snipe, it is shot in great numbers. At times it is 

 so much less careful about concealing itself than at others, that it is not at all 

 uncommon to see it walking about over its wet feeding-grounds, and on such 

 occasions many are killed. In such places I have found these birds by fifties 



