152 
FRANK FORESTER’S FIELD SPORTS. 
thereafter drop into the rushes. On both of these occasions, the 
birds lighted many times on the very topmost branches of the 
willows, and other trees, which lined the fences; and on one oc¬ 
casion, I saw a Snipe take flight from a branch, rise upward, 
and resume his drumming, without first returning to the level 
ground. 
On the day when I first witnessed these performances, which 
astonished me, I confess, little less than it would have done had 
they begun to sing “ God save the King,” or “ Hail Columbia,” 
which would perhaps have been more appropriate—I observed 
that when, at length, they ceased drumming, which they did as 
the day grew hotter, they all flew off in one direction, toward 
some meadows overrun with brakes, cat-briars, brambles and 
thorn bushes; and herein I had good sport with them for seve¬ 
ral hours, after having despaired, in the morning, of getting a 
shot at all. 
Since that time, I have repeatedly found them in similar 
ground at Chatham, yet higher up on the course of the Passaic, 
where there is a great deal of covert of that particular nature- 
low stunted bushes, and briar patches, growing in boggy, springy 
ground. So notoriously is it the case that Snipe, on their first 
coming, there frequent such localities, whenever the weather is 
not more than commonly warm and genial, that it is the habit 
of many old sportsmen to beat for them regularly in such places, 
without trying the meadows at all, on their first arrival. I have 
kitted hundreds of couples in such places; and have put up 
scores, at a small enumeration, of Woodcock, then sitting on their 
eggs , from the self-same coverts at the same time. Indeed, the 
same brakes, a little later in the season, afford the very best 
cock-shooting. Once, and once only, at the same place, Chat¬ 
ham, during a snow-squall, I shot several couple of Snipe in a 
very thick piece of swampy woodland, among tall timber-trees 
with heavy undercovert—precisely what one would call admi¬ 
rable summer Cock-ground—the Snipe flew in and out of the 
brakes, and thridded the branches, as rapidly as Quail or Cock 
would have done, in similar thickets. Wkat has happened 
