COMMON SNIPE 
a female on April 16 containing large eggs, one almost ready to be laid. It 
is also said to nest occasionally in North-west Africa, which seems highly 
probable. A few pairs occasionally remain to breed in favourable localities 
in India. 
In winter it migrates further south, and is found over a considerable 
portion of North Africa as far as Senegambia on the west, and the 
Southern Sudan and Abyssinia in the east ; it is also common in Southern 
Arabia, the Island of Socotra, South Persia, India, Ceylon, China, and 
the Malay countries as far as the Philippine Islands and Moluccas. To 
the eastern part of North America it is an occasional visitor, and has 
occurred in the Island of Bermuda. 
Allied species . — ^In North America the common snipe is represented 
by Wilson’s snipe {Gallinago delicatuld)^ a nearly allied species, which 
breeds from the Northern United States northwards up to the Arctic 
Circle. It winters in the Southern States, Bermuda, and the West Indies, 
and extends sparingly to the northern parts of South America, while 
stragglers have been met with as far south as Rio de Janeiro. The Ameri- 
can bird may usually be distinguished by having sixteen tail-feathers; 
the long axillary feathers below the wing are always transversely barred 
with black and white, and, the black bars being usually the wider, they 
may be described as black, barred with white ; the breast is barred with 
blackish. All these characters are, however, occasionally to be found in 
the common snipe, and individual examples are occasionally killed in 
Europe and Asia which seem to be referable to Wilson’s snipe. 
Besides the two species already mentioned, twenty different kinds of 
snipes are known, the genus being nearly cosmopolitan in its range. 
Eleven are confined to the Old World and the remaining nine are peculiar 
to South America. The snipes may be divided into two sections : the “ pin- 
tailed” and the “fan -tailed,” the latter group including the common and 
Wilson’s snipes, already mentioned. 
The pin -tailed section includes only one species, the common pin -tail 
{G. stenura), a remarkable bird, much like the common snipe in size and 
general appearance, but with twenty -six tail-feathers, of which the eight 
outer pairs are greatly attenuated. The outermost pairs are about one- 
tenth of an inch wide at the base, and less than half that width at the 
tip, which is slightly lobate. 
The pin-tail snipe breeds in Eastern Siberia, east of the Yenesei Valley, 
and ranges southwards to India, Ceylon, and Socotra. 
263 
