376 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



getting something all the while, and sometimes the whole body 

 seems to quiver with the satisfaction of it. It is a searching, 

 probing, finding, and then gobbling down process. One of them 

 brings up something out of the mud — something big, held at the 

 end of the beak. At first I think it is a frog ; but, no, it seems 

 to be a lump of mud and grass-roots about the size of one — a 

 grown one. He bobs his head up and down with it — -just as he 

 has been doing all the time — raising it from the ground and 

 bringing it down upon it again, as if to divide and search it. 

 Each time it descends it is lost to me in the grass, and, after two 

 or three bobs, the bill comes up without it. The superiority, as 

 an implement, of a Snipe's bill to that of another bird — a Star- 

 ling's, for instance — seems to me one of degree merely, not of 

 kind. It is used in just the same way. 



This reminds me of quite another way in which some people 

 suppose it to be used, for I was asked by a countryman about 

 here — one of the old yeoman class, so unhappily passing away — 

 whether the Snipe, when it flew up, really raised itself on its 

 beak, using this — so I understood him to mean — as a sort of 

 jumping-pole to swing up from. I said I should not have 

 thought that it ever did so, but that all I could be sure of was 

 that sometimes it didn't — so he remained doubtful. 



Besides the Starling there was a Chaffinch, at one time feed- 

 ing with these two Snipes. What an incongruous trio ! but I 

 am often struck with the way in which quite different kinds of 

 birds come together. The Chaffinch both hops and walks, but 

 his hop is not springy, and, it seems, rather, a transition between 

 the two modes of progression. 



Squirrels are about, again, in the pine plantations this after- 

 noon. It is fine and bright, certainly, but a hard frost and very 

 cold. A Blackbird is hopping and picking about amongst the 

 dead leaves. He pecks them up and throws them, with leaves 

 and sticks, to one side or the other, shovels them, too — using 

 both head and beak as the shovel — and gives an occasional 

 scratch as well. Whilst thus clearing a space, he crouches right 

 down on his breast, amongst the leaves, in a brooding attitude. 

 Several Blackbirds are doing this now, but, having watched a 

 cock one from quite near, and marked the exact spot, I wait till 

 he has flown off, and then walk straight to it. The more or less 



