THE SNIPE. 
187 
made by tbe wings of tbe humming bird. In this instance, 
as well as in the former, all my sporting acquaintance were 
familiar with this quivering call, but had never decided 
upon its author. 
At the same time, probably instigated by anger and 
jealousy, I observed flying high and rapid, a pair of these 
Snipes, who then uttered a discordant quacking sound; 
something like the bleat they make when they have de- 
scended to the ground, and which they accompany with an 
attitude of peculiar stupidity, balancing the head forwards, 
and the tail upwards and downwards, like the action of 
some automaton toy, jerked and set in motion by a tight- 
drawn string. 
After incubation, which takes place rather early in the 
spring, the humming is no longer heard, and the sprightly 
aerial evolutions which appeared so indefatigable, have now 
given way to sedater attitudes and feebler tones. A few 
pairs no doubt breed in the extensive and almost inaccessi- 
ble morasses of Cambridge ponds or lagoons ; and I have 
been informed, that they select a tuft of sedge for the foun- 
dation of the nest, which is constructed with considerable 
art ; the eggs, like those of the European species, about four, 
are perhaps alike olivaceous and spotted with brown. 
They probably scatter themselves over the interior of the 
continent to breed, nowhere associating in great numbers ; 
nor are they at all common in the hyperboreal retreats 
chosen by so many of the other wading birds. My friend, 
