FRANK FORESTER'S FIELD SPORTS. 
21 % 
ber,—the latter bird being for the most part a few days behind 
his congener. 
It is very well worthy of remark, both by the sportsman and 
the scientific ornithologist, that on their return in- the autumn, 
neither the Woodcock nor the Snipe are found precisely on 
the same ground, which they use in spring ; and I am inclined 
to believe, that a more thorough investigation of this fact, might 
lead to the acquisition of more knowledge than we possess at 
present, concerning the causes of the migration of our various 
birds of passage. 
In my articles on spring Snipe, and summer Cock shooting, 
I have observed that at these seasons the two birds frequently 
appear to change their habits and haunts mutually ; the former 
being very often found in low brushwood, and among dense 
briar patches, and the latter, even more commonly, on open, 
rushy, water meadows, without a bush or particle of covert in 
the vicinity. 
In no respect does this ever happen in the autumn. I have 
seen no instance myself, nor have I heard of any from the most 
constant and Tegular country sportsman, who have the best op 
portunity of noting such peculiarities, of the Snipe ever resort¬ 
ing even to the thinnest covert on wood-edges, much less to 
dense coppices and tall woodlands, in the autumn. Nor have I 
ever seen a Woodcock on open meadow in that season. 
In Salem county, in New Jersey, this latter fact is very 
strongly demonstrated; inasmuch as during the summer the 
birds are hunted entirely, and four-fifths of them killed, on what 
would elsewhere be called regular Snipe ground, or in small 
brakes along the dykes and river margins ; and there is no finer 
summer Cock ground than this county, in the whole State. 
In the autumn, on the contrary, when the bird seeks other lo¬ 
calities, there is little or no covert, such as he loves, to be found 
in Salem, and of consequence, there is little or no autumn Cock 
shooting to be had in the southern district of New Jersey. 
The Snipe, on his arrival, betakes himself at once to the same 
ranges of country, and the same meadows, as in the spring* 
