NOTES AND QUERIES. 197 
orthodox manner. I ought to add that as it flew past me the tip of 
its bill was open. 
The habit—and I must call it this, rather than the trick of a 
single highly abnormal bird—seems so extraordinary to me, and so 
far beyond the acrobatic movements of Rooks or Hawks that I have 
known, that I am taking the step of writing this note at once, and 
not waiting until I have sought records of similar observations by 
others. In my paper on the Snipe in the last volume of ‘ The 
Zoologist’ I indicated that I hoped to write at greater length on the 
subject of voice, but I would like to place this present detail on record 
at once, and hope that others may be led to observe the same 
action. Possibly it is usual with the bird, and perhaps it has been 
recorded before; but, if so, a second note will be in no way over- 
loading the subject. When we stand to watch a Snipe circling its 
zigzag course above an open field in full sunlight, it may seem to 
possess a transparent life, but really few birds are more difficult to 
observe, and fewer still that are worthier of persistent study.— 
PREDE. J. STUBBS. 
Snipe nesting in Bedfordshire—No satisfactory instance of the 
Snipe having nested in this county has ever been recorded. For the 
past twenty years I have visited the various localities in Bedfordshire, 
such as at Flitton and Flitwick Marsh, the low-lying meadows of the 
Rivers Ouse and Ivel, and again at Newnham, where this bird might 
be tempted to nest. In such localities it is not infrequently observed 
throughout the nesting period, and many times by their ‘‘drumming”’ 
‘and other nesting actions and calls I have been led to think they must 
be breeding, but many friends and myself have searched in vain. On 
April 7th last I noticed two pairs frequenting a very favourable stretch 
of marshy meadow land that has probably only got into such con- 
dition in recent years. On May 2nd I revisited this locality in com- 
pany with a friend, and after a diligent search first found a nest con- 
taining an addled egg and the egg-shells from which young had 
recently been hatched, and eventually the three young themselves, a 
day or so old, and after that we flushed another bird from her nest con- 
taining four fresh eggs.—J. StrenLE Huuiorr (Dowles Manor, Salop). 
Origin of the Social Antics and Courting Displays of Birds.—In 
reading the recently issued Section 7 of Kirkman’s ‘The British Bird 
Book,’ I was pleased to find that Mr, Farren supports me in my view 
that the gocial antics of birds, as well as their more formal and 
elaborate courting displays, have had their origin in those violent 
and often frenzied movements which spring directly from sexual 
