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snipe-shooters to bagging large specimens of the full snipe, that there can be little doubt the great snipe frequently escapes recognition, unless those through whose hands the birds pass are especially on the lookout for it. Besides this, a vast number of people who engage in snipe shooting are quite unaware of the distinction between the two birds. While there are many who are ignorant of the existence of the great snipe as a separate species, there are not a few who, unacquainted with the true distinction, call any extra large full snipe a great snipe. On more than one occasion I have had my attention drawn by professional Norfolk wild-fowlers who are very good field naturalists as a rule-to supposed great snipe which proved on examination to be nothing more than large full snipe. As an opposite instance, not long ago I looked over a selected batch of birds supposed to be only heavy specimens of full snipe, and found no fewer than three great snipe among their number. A fine specimen of the full snipe will weigh as much as a small specimen of the great snipe; the latter bird varies in weight to no less degree than the former.

A description of the plumage of the full snipe applies in all material details to the great snipe with the exception of the belly and the tail, the other differences being so small that in all of them the great

snipe may be exactly matched by specimens of the full snipe which, as is so often the case, depart in some detail or another from the standard shading. These two distinctions, those of the tail and the belly, guided by which one may infallibly and at once say whether a certain bird is a great snipe or a full snipe, are: that whereas the belly of the full snipe is pure white that of the great snipe is more or less mottled, and that while the full snipe has only fourteen feathers in its tail the great snipe has sixteen. Proportionately to its weight, the great snipe is shorter in the wing than the full snipe. Its beak is also slightly shorter.

The breeding grounds of the great snipe are Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Russia, Germany, and Holland. The birds reach us between mid-August and early November, and after resting for a shorter or longer time continue their southward journey, returning to their northern haunts in the spring. The large majority of our visitors are young birds. I do not think there is an authentic instance of a great snipe having been shot in our islands later than November. Those birds which visit us are stragglers from the main body, whose migrating line is eastward of our shores. The great snipe flies slowly and heavily, and without twisting; the flights it makes are short, like those of the jack—indeed, its habits much more

closely resemble those of the jack than those of the full snipe. It utters no cry on rising. As one of its names implies, it is a solitary bird, scarcely ever being found in company, and then rarely with more than a single companion.

In parts of Sweden great snipe are very numerous, bags of fifty or sixty having been made in a day. I fancy the bird is more frequently met with in the eastern counties of England than in any other part of the kingdom; and this is only what one would expect. It was apparently much more common in Scotland and Ireland at one time than now. The following, penned nearly sixty years ago by Major Walker, of Belmont, Wexford, is worth quoting, as it records an experience quite unheard of at the present day. From the writer's description of the bird, there can be no doubt at all that the snipe he shot were really great snipe.

The Solitary Snipe I have at different times shot here is much larger than the Common Snipe; bill shorter; plumage nearly alike, with the exception of the belly, which in the Common is white, but in the Solitary is speckled with gray and brown. It lies close, and when flushed makes no cry, flies steadily without twisting, and slower than the Common (probably from its fatness, and not being a shy bird), and pitches again, like the Jack Snipe, after a short flight of thirty or forty yards. I never heard a cry from it; but

sportsmen abroad have told me it has one, not, however, resembling that of the Common Snipe. . In one winter, about fifteen years ago, Solitary Snipes were plentiful in the grassy lands of Hayestown, at the foot of the mountain of Forth, about four miles from Wexford. Every day I shot there, I got three or four birds; since that time the ground has been drained, and all kinds of snipe have quitted it; but I generally get a few elsewhere in the course of the winter's shooting in the county of Wexford.

The great snipe usually met with in the British Islands, being mostly immature birds, have their plumage lighter than that of adults. The males average about 7 oz. in weight; the females about 8 oz. Specimens have been killed weighing as much

as IO OZ.

The great snipe has never been known to breed with us.

THE JACK SNIPE.

Coming to the jack snipe, we find ourselves on more familiar ground, for the diminutive bird is well known. to every one whose ways carry him into the haunts of snipe. Not that the jack is really so very common. Whether we shoot in England, Scotland, Ireland, or Wales, we do not perhaps encounter more than three or four jack to every hundred full snipe. It is a matter of constant observation that the jack is found in

fewer numbers every year. I do not think the total of the jack that now visit us in a season is more than half that of a season say five and twenty years ago. Whether the bird has really decreased in numbers must be considered an open question. On my own part I attribute the decrease in the total of our annual immigrants simply to the change of seasons that has taken place during recent years: the reason we now meet with comparatively so few birds is, not that the head of jack in Europe has undergone a diminution, but that every year a smaller number consider it necessary to seek such a genial wintering place as the British Islands. The food supply of the jack, as we shall see later, is not affected by the weather to the same extent as the full snipe's. During the mild and short winters of the present day, the jack picks up a comfortable living in countries where he could not have existed in the time of the old severe winters, and where the full snipe cannot exist even now.

The main body of jack reach us between the middle of September and the middle of October. It is often said that the jack snipe is the pilot of the woodcock-that when a jack is seen you may take your gun and expect to find a 'cock or two in some favoured haunt. This, however, is not correct. The autumn fall of woodcock does not take place till

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