340 
WILSON’S SNIPE. 
likely to be disturbed by man, and finds immediately around it an abundance 
of food. The nest itself is a mere hollow in the moss, scantily inlaid with a 
few grasses. The eggs, which, like those of many of the Tringas, are four, 
and placed with the small ends together, measure one inch and five-eighths 
by one and one-eighth, being pyriform, with the tip somewhat inflated. The 
ground colour is a yellowish-olive, pretty thickly spotted and blotched with 
light and dark umber, the markings increasing in size as they approach the 
large end, where they form a circle. The young, like those of the Wood- 
cock, leave the nests as soon as hatched, and so resemble those of the 
Common Snipe of Europe, Scolopax Gallinago, that the same description 
answers for both, they being covered with down of different tints of brown 
and greyish-yellow. The bill is at this age short, very soft and easily bent 
by the least pressure ; nor does it acquire its full growth before winter, and 
its length differs in different apparently full grown individuals, by half an 
inch or even three-fourths. They seem to feed at first on minute insects 
collected on the surface of the mires, or amid the grass and moss; but as they 
grow older, and the bill becomes firmer and larger, they probe the ground 
like their parents, and soon become expert at this operation, introducing the 
bill at every half inch or so of the oozy mire, from which they principally 
obtain their food. In the Middle States, this Snipe, however, has been 
found breeding in meadqws, as well as in the State of Maine ; and it also 
nestles in the mountainous districts of these parts of the Union. I never 
had the good fortune to meet with a nest in Pennsylvania, although I have 
known several instances of a pair breeding not far from Mill Grove on the 
Perkioming. 
In the Western Country this bird arrives from the north early in October, 
alighting in the low meadows watered by warm springs, and along the 
borders of ponds and small secluded rivulets, sometimes in the corn-fields 
after a continuance of rainy weather, but never in the woods or any place 
from which it cannot easily make its escape when approached. In Kentucky 
it often remains all winter, and is at times very abundant. Farther south, 
it is more plentiful, especially in the lower parts of Louisiana, where it is 
named “ cache cache” by the Creoles, and over the whole country between 
that State and the Carolinas. During winter, it is not uncommon in 
Louisiana to meet with it in flocks of considerable numbers, as is also the 
case in South Carolina, where the grounds of the rice-planter afford it 
abundance of food. In some fields well known to my Charleston friends, as 
winter retreats of the snipe, it is shot in great numbers. At times it is 
so much less careful about concealing itself than at others, that it is not at all 
uncommon to see it walking about over its wet feeding-grounds, and on such 
occasions many are killed. In such places I have found these birds by fifties 
