MK. II. STKVKNSOX ON THE COMMON SNIPE. 
489 
the clear blue sky, at other times sweeping past over the tops of 
tlio trees, its long bill distinctly visible. The flight was noiseless 
except a slight “buzzing” now and then, but its “play,” if such 
the drumming may be termed, seemed lost in anxiety. 
It is curious to note how differently our British ornithologists 
render the vocal sound. Selby remarks : “ At the end of March 
the male commences his calls of invitation for a mate. These are 
always uttered on the wing, and consist of a piping or clicking 
note often repeated.” 
Thompson (‘ Birds of Ireland ’) speaks of two dilferent notes in 
the breeding season, “a piping note, well observed, to resemble the 
.sound jmet repeated, and that which h:vs been likened to the 
word tinki’r" (corresponding, 1 presume, to my term chukn). 
“ The former,” he says, “ 1 have generally heard in the bird’s 
ascending flight, the latter chiefly from the ground.” But here 
the words former and latter must surely have been transpo.sed. 
Thompson further states that the alarm note is somdUhiij mnrr, 
as it is uttered during the bird's evening flights to its feeding 
grounds, when quite unmolested. 
Sir W. .lardine {‘British Birds,’ vol. iii.) mentions Snipes 
“piping amongst the herbage.” 
In the fourth edition of Yarrell (p. 34G), the editor (piotes fniin 
the ‘Ibis’ for 1S7G (p. 310), where ^lessr-s. vSeebohm and Ilarvie- 
Brown record the fact of a Snipe having been shot from the top 
of a larch tree seventy feet high, and which, in that position, 
“ was uttering its double clucking tjlck-tjuck, fjick-fjiirk” 
Seebohm again, in his ‘ British Birds ’ says : “ In the breeding 
season the note of the Snipe is a mpidly uttered fi/ik-ft/tik,” and 
asserts that this note is common to both sexes. 
^lacgillivray, however, gives the ascending note as zno-zee, zrxhzee, 
whilst Yarrell himself,* writing under the signature of H. V. D. 
in ‘Loudon’s Magazine of Natural History,’ vol. ii. p. 144, from 
an intimate acquaintance with the Snipe grounds near Yarmouth, 
says : “ The period of pairing commences in April, at which time 
the male Snipe serenades its mate with two distinct notes, differing 
as widely from each other as from the cry they utter at other times, 
the one note may be compared to the repetition of the word tinker, 
tinker, uttered in a sharp shrill tone as the bird ascends in flight ; 
• Fide Thonip.«oii, ‘ Birds of Ireland.’ 
