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frequent washing of its bill, which quickly becomes incrusted with drying earth. When such incrustation has taken place, the adhering matter not only interferes with the passage of the beak into the soil but also, no doubt, lessens the delicacy of its sense of touch when in the ground. Hence the snipe when feeding repairs to the water at frequent intervals for the purpose of cleansing its bill. The slime from the worms tends to form rapid incrustation. When a snipe is feeding by the water, the bird carefully washes a worm before swallowing it; but when feeding at any distance from water, he devours the worm as it is, taking it by the middle and sucking it through compressed mandibles, the pressure eliminating the slimy earth, which adheres to the bill and hardens rapidly. The snipe will spend many minutes cleansing his beak after feeding at a distance from water—and he usually has a thorough wash and brush up before

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I have several times known people wonder, both in print and verbally, why snipe should show themselves devoted to a bare peaty bog where worms could only be comparatively few and far between, and scorn rich meadow land not half a mile away, where a shallow spit taken anywhere would turn up three or four worms. The preference of the birds for the one place before the other is due to the respective presence and absence of water. Under normal conditions, they find enough worms in the peat; when ravenous after a frost they flock to the meadow, but again ignore it when once more fat.

resuming his meal. The bird devotes a large share of his life to washing.

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I have said, when dealing with the jack, that the full snipe never indulges in vegetarian diet. This assertion can be challenged on the authority of various people who have written on natural history matters. may be wrong; but until actual proof of the contrary comes under my notice, I shall continue in the conviction that the bird never under any circumstances feeds upon vegetable matter. During hard weather it is rare to find anything at all in a full snipe, and when something can be found, that something is only grit and a small mollusc or two. In open weather the contents of the bird sometimes disclose traces of vegetable matter, but the explanation of this I believe to be that the matter is not swallowed at first hand by the bird but has been already eaten by what the bird eats. If the bird took vegetable matter at all we should surely expect to find such matter in the crop during hard weather; and this I have never known to be found.

When the full snipe is feeding in earnest, he gives attention to nothing but worms, which are his dietetic mainstay; when feeding fugitively, after having for a time satisfied his enormous appetite, he will pick up almost anything belonging to the smaller animal

creation. After worms, he is apparently more partial to small mollusca than other things. It is said on good authority that even leeches have been found in his crop. The snipe's appetite and powers of rapid digestion fall but a little way behind those of the robin. A full snipe has been known, when kept in confinement, to demolish double its own weight of worms in a day.

Almost throughout Northern Europe and Asia, the full snipe breeds in enormous numbers. When the period of the autumn migration comes round the birds begin their southward journey, and in a short time spread themselves over the whole of the more southern part of Europe, nearly the whole of the mainland of Asia, and a large portion of North Africa. Their chosen Asian haunts are India and China; their favourite home in Africa is Morocco, while Egypt also affords really good snipe shooting.

Our own migrants from the north begin to reach us in small numbers during the second week of October. The migration is at its height a week or a fortnight later, and ends about the first of December. These dates are to be taken as average dates only, for the time of the birds' coming is largely ruled by the weather. When winter sets in early in the north, snipe reach us before their average time, while very

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open weather will lead them to defer their journey. They leave us again between the middle of February and the first few days of March. I have known snipe come in over the north Norfolk coast for a continuous period of three hours, all the birds taking the same line and the majority of them flying singly. When they were in parties, these parties seldom numbered more than half a dozen head. Sometimes as many as ten minutes would elapse between the passage of one bird or one party of birds and another. The stream ended as suddenly as it began.

Full snipe breed freely in various parts of the British Islands. For some years past the number of home-breeding birds has been steadily increasing. During open winters, those of our home birds which leave the country-I believe many of them do so however mild the season may be-never stray far afield, and return to us in the spring. Thus, given a succession of mild winters, the stock of homebreeding birds continuously increases. But when there comes a really severe winter, the birds are driven further and further south, and a large proportion of them never find their way back, so that the home-breeding stock of the following summer is largely reduced in numbers.

The date of the pairing of snipe is governed by the season. They may begin to pair as early as the end of January or as late as the latter part of March.

The nest of the snipe, which is nothing more than a cavity in the ground roughly lined with dead grass or other herbage and occasionally leaves, is made in some dry spot, generally under the shelter of a tuft of grass or a patch of furze or heather. Its situation is always adjacent to a favourite feeding ground. There are rarely more than four eggs, and handsome eggs they are. The ground colour varies considerably, from buff to pale olive; the larger end is mottled with different shades of brown. The eggs are always arranged with their points together in the centre of the nest. They are large in proportion to the size of the bird, measuring over an inch and a half in length. The period of incubation is about sixteen days. It is believed that the male bird takes no part in the sitting. As young snipe have been found as late as the middle of August, it seems as though two broods are sometimes raised in the season.

A few hours after they leave the shell, young snipe vacate the nest and follow the parent birds as they search for food. Sometimes an old snipe will feign disablement like a partridge, in order to entice an intruder away from the nest or the young. The

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