The Wilson Snipe 
of twisted sedges. Seeing that I was not to be deflected by violence, the 
mistress of the nest flung herself upon a wet island hard by and indulged 
in a vigorous decoy pantomime. The appeal was not to hunger this time, 
nor was there any pretense of broken bones. In her extremity the bird 
offered herseli—upon the altar of desire. The yonigic motif of the pose 
was unmistakable, and the elevated tail, spread fan-wise, exposed rufous 
tips of unsuspected brilliance, and formed a setting really seductive. But 
again the bird had guessed wrong. The birdman proved a veritable 
St. Jerome, and the lady, scorned, left in highest dudgeon. 
Returning a little later, with a view to securing a snapshot of the 
rising bird, she flushed less noisily, while I was still twenty feet away. 
Another attempt put her off at thirty feet; and on a still later occasion she 
sneaked away, instead, and flushed at a considerable distance. 
So long as intruders are near his swamp, Jack himself keeps a sharp 
lookout; and he does not hesitate to appropriate for the purpose any ele¬ 
vated station,—fence-post, hay-rick, or tree-top. On such occasions, 
when the bird is settled on a post, regarding you with sober down-turned 
beak and watchful eye, the effect is irresistibly comical. Still more 
diverting and very much rarer is the sight of two or three youngsters, 
with half-grown beaks, trooping after a mother who is all solicitude or 
brooding tenderness. And the pleasure which the youngsters evince 
when it comes their turn to thrust long skewers into the mud is diverting 
in the extreme. Theirs is a joy akin to the making of mud pies, and what 
child is there who would not just love to make mud pies for a living! 
The history of the Jack-snipe as a breeding bird of California has 
been a succession of surprises. We all knew in a vague way that the birds 
bred in the swamps of the northeastern plateau country about Tahoe, and 
in the Modoc-Lassen region. But when Joseph Mailliard reported 1 the 
taking by A. van Rossem of a set of four eggs near Gorman, in extreme 
northwestern Los Angeles County, we gasped with surprise. The date was 
April 24, 1914, and the altitude 3800, approximately that of Tahoe. 
This was a hundred miles south of any previous breeding record for the 
species, and the record itself proves to be, most amusingly, the first 
specific published record for this State. Other records from northern 
localities promptly followed. I have myself found Jack-snipe breeding at 
Goose Lake, in Modoc County, and at Bishop and Lone Pine, in the 
Owens Valley. But Judge Edward Wall capped the climax by publishing 
in 1919 1 an account of the Wilson Snipe as a long-established breeding 
bird near San Bernardino. Judge Wall’s experience reaches back to 
1887; and, specifically, he found a nest containing three eggs in 1917 
within two miles of the city ot San Bernardino, and in 1918 a nest con- 
1 The Condor, Vol. XVI., Nov. 1914, p. 261. 2 The Condor, Vol.XXI., Sept. 1919, PP- 207-209. 
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