216 COMMON SNIPE 
Many of these birds are doubtless passing migrants, 
especially in autumn and spring, on their way to winter or 
summer quarters, south or north. Mr. Crellin says that 
the spring flight passes through the island in March or the 
beginning of April, and the autumn migrants are numerous 
in October and November. 
Two hundred and fifty-two Manx Snipe, according to the 
Chief Constable’s report, appeared in the books of Manx 
game-dealers in 1902, against thirty imported. This pro- 
bably includes ‘Jacks. In 1903 appeared two hundred 
and seven native, and twelve imported specimens. 
In the autumn of 1879 (without more exact date) a 
Snipe is recorded at Douglas Head. On 18th November 
1880 one was killed during snow, at the lantern at the 
same station, and 10th November 1885 one at Langness, 
and on 22nd November 1886 another was reported at 
Langness (M. R., p. 101, wrongly 22nd October on p. 113). 
The only occasion when I have met with Snipe on the 
shore was Christmas Day 1904, when three rose around 
me from the edge of Castletown Bay under the Golf Links. 
They had been sheltering just beneath high-water mark, 
where the low weedy rocks met a shingly beach, heavily 
heaped with masses of wrack cast up by the tide, but I was 
not able to make out exactly where they hid under these 
circumstances. 
Snipe breed very sparingly in Man, as in the Ballaugh 
Curraghs, in the ‘moaneys’ of the upper part of Lonan, 
and the marsh land at Greeba. According to Mr. Roeder 
(Isle of Man Examiner, 13th September 1902), the ‘ Ghoayr 
haittagh’ is sometimes looked upon as a mythical creature, 
and the curious quivering trill which is an accompaniment 
of the love-season of the Snipe disconnected from its real 
author. ‘There is something,’ said his informant, ‘the old 
people called the ghoayr haddagh, shouting in the island 
