164 
FRANK FORESTER’S FIELD SPORTS. 
sessed the power of taking wing from the surface of water, 
which I am greatly inclined to doubt. I was well aware pre¬ 
viously of the fact, that many of the Shore-birds and Sand-, 
pipers swim on emergency, but I little suspected the Snipe of 
possessing the like power. 
I know not that the being acquainted with this habit of the 
Snipe can materially aid the sportsman; but, in case of dogs 
drawing on the trail of birds, which had run and fed, up to a 
brook-side, or on the foot of a wing-tipped bird, I should now 
certainly try forward, across the water, which I should not pre¬ 
viously have done. 
The peculiarities of cry, flight, and perching, which I have 
related above, are well known to many of our sportsmen here; 
and I can readily produce half-a-dozen witnesses to the various 
facts I have stated, within a dozen miles of the room in which 
I am now writing; as well as to the bird’s occasional habit of 
resorting to the interior of woods, which Mr. Audubon positive¬ 
ly asserts that he never does. 
By the way, since penning the above, it just strikes me that 
in the Spring of 1840, when the snow was not entirely off the 
Uplands, in shooting with a friend from Quebec, we moved three 
Snipe from a little piece of white-birch woodland, one of which 
was shot by my companion, and retrieved by my setter in the 
bushes, and a second of which I killed over a point in the next 
field, not very far from Lorette. 
I am inclined to believe all these habits to be purely local , 
as concerns the American bird. Not local, owing to any 
peculiar circumstance of the place, but of the seasons in which 
the bird visits or frequents the places. In other words, I sup¬ 
pose them all to be connected with the amorous and sexual 
intercourse of the birds, and to commence and terminate with 
the breeding season. 
In the summer, when I have shot a few young birds during 
Cock-shooting, and in the autumn when I have killed five 
times as many as I have in spring, I never heard any cry from 
the Snipe except the regular “ scaipe nor have I ever seen 
