Snipe and woodcock

Front matter

\^. B.CLARKE Co7

Park sc, Church, _Bo5TONj

%vy h y

Preface

The design of the Fur, Feather, and Fin Series is to present monographs, as complete as they can possibly be made, on the various English birds, beasts, and fishes which are generally included under the head of Game.

Books on Natural History cover such a vast number of subjects that their writers necessarily find it impossible to deal with each in a really comprehensive manner ; and it is not within the scope of such works exhaustively to discuss the animals described in the light of objects of sport. Books on sport, again, seldom treat at length of the Natural History of the creatures which are shot or otherwise taken ; and, so far as the Editor is aware, in no book hitherto published on Natural History or Sport has information been given as to the best methods of turning the contents of the bag to account.

PkEFA CM

Each volume of the present Series is, therefore, devoted to a bird, beast, or fish — except that in the present book two birds are included. Their origin is traced, their birth and breeding described, every known method of circumventing and killing them —not omitting the methods employed by the poacher — is explained with special regard to modern developments, and they are only left when on the table in the most appetising forms which the delicate science of cookery has discovered.

ALFRED E. T. WATSON.

Contents

NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SNIPE

By L. H. De Visme Shaw chap. page

I. The Full Snipe and his Cousins ... 3

Chapter I

Woodcock and snipe, or snipe and woodcock ? The question is, which bird should be given precedence, which bird is the more important from the points of view of the ornithologist and the sportsman, and, one should add, from the point of view of the epicurean ? For the ornithologist, both birds abound in interest. Both, though such closely related members of the same family, are widely distinct in habits the one from the other, and each has habits neither possessed by the other nor by any other British bird.

Of an immense group of familiar birds, a group made up of various distinct families, we can say that they have a fixed residence throughout the year ; or, in the case of migratory birds, throughout that portion of the year which they spend within our islands, that they feed in a small radius, that they pair when the springtime comes round and build their nests and carry food

B 2 to their young till the young are able to fly and feed themselves, that they dissolve the matrimonial bond when the breeding season is over, and then go on leading the same humdrum, stay-at-home life till another mating time greets them. We know all about these birds, we know all about their movements and their lives, and how they pass their time and why they come and go. Their habits in general are very nearly the same. Striking individual pecuHarities we find, of course. The nightingale sings when other singing birds are asleep; the cuckoo lays her egg on the ground, and then, taking it in her bill, places it in the nest of some small bird, a nest which the young cuckoo when hatched quickly makes his own by unceremoniously ejecting the rightful inhabitants, casting them out to certain and speedy death and consuming the food that should have been theirs ; the kestrel, motionless save for the beating of his wings, hangs hovering in the air, scanning the ground for his prey ; the heron and the kingfisher rest still as logs for an hour at a spell as they watch for their food to come near them. Such birds have peculiar and strikingly marked habits which differentiate them from all others, and make them at once objects of more than ordinary interest. So it is with the woodcock and the snipe. But in addition to a peculiarly distinct habit of each of these birds — carrying the young ones in the case of the woodcock, and drumming in the case of the snipe, habits which no other birds possess — we have a further pecuharity common to both of them, viz. their uncertainty, or erratic ways, uncertainty such as we never see displayed by the rest of the birds with which we are acquainted. • The carrying of the young by the woodcock and the drumming of the snipe, the points upon which the question of ornithological importance seems naturally to turn, may be said to make the two birds of equal interest to the student of animate nature ; other things being equal, or just about equal, we can, from the naturalist's point of view, credit neither bird with that which would give it precedence before the other.

From the point of view of the epicurean, a ballot would place the woodcock easily first. But is there strict justification for giving the snipe only second place in this ? If the herring had been the rarest instead of the very commonest of all the fish we eat, and could only be bought at, let us say, the price we give for a lobster of respectable dimensions, it is quite probable that a Yarmouth bloater would now be held by om gourmet as the very king offish, just as he holds the woodcock to be the very king of birds : if the woodcock had been as common as the lark, the kinghood bestowed upon it by the gourfnet would never have been called into existence — and the selfsame epicurean would to-day think vastly less of a woodcock than of a Yarmouth bloater. Such is the nature of man : what is rare and hard to attain, that we strive for and value ; upon what may be had almost for the asking we set but little store, if indeed we do not altogether despise it. Is the woodcock more worthy of kinghood than the snipe, or has he merely gained his position because, while really he is a no greater delicacy, he is the very much rarer bird ? — is the snipe really less delicious than the 'cock ?

I doubt it : I think that if a dozen people who had never tasted either bird before were asked to decide the matter, two would vote for the 'cock as the better bird, two for the snipe as the better bird, and that the remainder would say there was nothing to choose between them. Though our epicurean would vote the woodcock into the foremost place, it is an open question whether the snipe would not have held that place had the relative abundance of the two birds been reversed. There is little doubt that appreciation of the woodcock is to some extent, we will say only a very, very small extent if you like, due to the fact that, though always by far the rarer bird, he was much more easily and more often secured for the larder in pre-gunning days than was the snipe. The woodcock could then be caught easily, the snipe with difficulty. Hence the 'cock was a more or less common dish at the tables of the rich at that far-back time, while the snipe was an uncommon one, and the 'cock became the chief of familiar table birds. That position he has retained ever since ;- and the diner of to-day holding the woodcock to be 'the very best bird that ever did fly,' we must grant the 'cock precedence before the snipe in gastronomic respect.

And from the point of view of the sportsman — the most important point of view of all. Here, again controversy would be endless. The woodcock is a bird comparatively seldom met with, very rarely met with throughout the greater part of the British Islands ; he is, as we have seen, considered greatly superior to every other bird from the point of view of the epicurean, a fact w^hich gives him a special value all his own in the sportsman's eyes ; he is one of the most sporting birds to kill, many say the most sporting j the gunner who is fortunate enough to bring a 'cock to bag w^hile covert-shooting carries the honours of the day ; and the average sportsman thinks far more of killing a woodcock than of killing any other bird whatsoever. Thus, at first glance, it seems as though it should be said that the 'cock, from the sportsman's point of view, is of more importance than the snipe, even perhaps that he is of more importance than any other game bird. Is it right, however, that the 'cock should be given precedence here ? To every one woodcock killed in the British Islands, how many snipe are killed ? Whatever the proportion may be, we can only say in the ordinary way of speaking that the 'cock IS an uncommon bird and the snipe is a common one. Woodcock shooting proper, is only within reach of the favoured few, favoured by wealth or locality ; snipe shooting is engaged in by the many, for wherever there is low, wet land, there may the snipe be found. Where there will be twenty readers of these pages who have never the opportunity of doing more than killing a very occasional 'cock by the covert side, there will be but one who is ever able to take part in what may be strictly called woodcock shooting ; while there will be but one who is able to take part in what may strictly be called woodcock shooting, there will be fifty who engage regularly in snipe shootnig. Therefore, from the point of view of sportsmen at large, it is to be taken that the snipe is a more important bird than the 'cock. Both birds are equal from the ornithologist's point of view ; and as the point of view of the epicurean is altogether less worthy than that of the sportsman, we will give precedence to the smaller long-bill and discuss him forthwith.

There are two snipe abundant throughout the British Islands, viz. the full snipe, the common snipe, the whole snipe or the heather-bleater {Scolopax galltnago), and the Jack snipe, the half snipe, or the Judcock {Scolopax gallinuld) ; there is one snipe which is comparatively a rare bird, viz. the great snipe, the double snipe, or the solitary snipe {Scolopax major) ; and there are two snipe, viz. the brown snipe, the red-breasted snipe, or the grey snipe (Scolopax grisea), and Sabine's snipe or the black snipe {Scolopax Sabini), which are so rare as visitors to us that only occasional specimens have been obtained.

SABINE'S SNIPE

It is now generally held by ornithologists that Sabine's snipe is not a distinct species, but merely a dark variety of the full snipe. The arguments in favour of this belief are, that the breeding ground of such a bird is unknown and that among the Scolopacidce. variations in the tints of plumage are very far from rare. Possibly when northern latitudes are more thoroughly explored we may prove Sabine's snipe to be a true species. It took our antipodean relatives a century to discover the breeding place, Japan, of the

Australian snipe. If it were really true — and on the prime authority of Yarrell the assertion is often made and believed — that Sabine's snipe has only twelve tail feathers, its individuality as a species would be obvious, for it is certainly not a melanism of the jack, and both the full snipe and the great snipe have tail feathers in excess of this number. To set this matter finally at rest I consulted Doctor Bowdler Sharpe, who was kind enough to have an examination made for me of the specimens classified as Sabine's snipe at the South Kensington Museum. The result of this examination was that all the birds were found to possess fourteen tail feathers, the same number as that owned by the full snipe.

THE BROWN SNIPE

Perhaps a dozen specimens, perhaps a few more, of the brown snipe have been encountered in England : I know no authentic case of its occurrence in Scotland or Ireland. It abounds on parts of the American coast during the winter, returning to its breeding haunts in the extreme north with the advent of spring. The bird feeds almost entirely by the sea shore. Brown snipe keep in large wisps, and fly in close formation Hke the stint. Upwards of a hundred have been killed at a shot by American coast gunners.

THE FULL SNIPE AND HIS COUSINS ii

The length of the brown snipe is about lo^ in.; its weight about 3} oz. Mr. Beverley R. Morris describes its summer and winter plumage thus : —

In the summer, the plumage above is marked with black, cut into narrow waves of brownish yellow ; the rump and tail coverts are white, the tip of each feather marked with a crescent-formed spot of black on the tip, and barred diagonally with the same'colour ; the tail is also white, slightly tinted with rufous, and with all the feathers barred with black. Beneath, the throat, neck, breast, and flanks are orange brown, each feather tipped and barred with black ; these colours gradually disappear downwards, and the centre of the belly, with the vent, are pure white. In winter the plumage is of a greyish brown on the head and neck, deeper on the back and wings, and these, in some states, have the feathers edged with paler margins. There is a tint of rufous on the breast, but the lower part of the chin and belly are white. The tail and its coverts are similar in all states, a slightly deeper rufous tinge on the former during summer. The axillary feathers are white, barred with black ; quills are deep hair brown ; shafts of the first broad and white. It may be observed that, from the month of April until winter, various intermediate states of plumage are passed through, often very beautiful

The brown snipe has twelve tail feathers.

' THE GREAT SNIPE

The great snipe is not, I think, quite so rare a bird as is often supposed ; for so close is its resemblance to the full snipe, and so accustomed are 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 look-out 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 nimiber. 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 ttie 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

THE FULL SNLLE AND HIS COUSINS 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 ot 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 ciy, 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

THE FULL SNLPE AND HIS COUSINS 15

sportsmen abroad have told me it has one, not, however, resembling that of the Common Snipe. ... In one winter, abotfT 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 10 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 from a fortnight to three weeks after the jack have begun to dr^rp into the country. Of course a few 'cock are killed very early in the season. But there is no ground whatever for assuming that these are other than home birds ; there is no evidence that the migrant 'cock have begun to arrive till we find them on the coast, and they have never yet appeared on the coast earlier than the first week in October. When 'cock come in as early as the first week in October, it is always during a season in which jack snipe have already spread themselves over the country a fortnight or so before that time. The jack snipe is the pilot of the woodcock in the sense that he reaches us first, but a fortnight after his arrival is quite soon enough to look for the 'cock that follow him.

Jack snipe leave us during the end of March and the beginning of April, by which time they have begun to assume their summer plumage.

While there have been certain supposed instances of the jack snipe having bred in the British Islands, not one of them has ever been satisfactorily proved. Nests have been found and those who found them have averred that their owners were jack snipe ; but actual proof has always been lacking, and until such time as a jack is indubitably proved to be connected with a supposed jack's nest our minds must remain

c open on the question as to whether or not the bird ever breeds here. The eggs of the jack snipe cannot be identified as jack snipe's eggs apart from their direct connection with the jack snipe itself. There have been various people who have testified to having seen jack in the months of June and July, but I think I am right in saying that no naturalist of repute has encountered the bird at such a season. A few stragglers— most likely birds which have failed to find mates — sometimes reach us four or five weeks before general migration begins ; when a jack is killed early in August there is no ground for assuming that the bird passed the summer here.

The jack snipe breeds throughout Northern Europe, and when the winter comes is to be found in nearly all the countries visited by the full snipe, whose range will be noticed a little further on. Wherever in the United Kingdom there is a district frequented by the full snipe, there also will the jack be found.

The average weight of the jack snipe is a trifle over 2 oz. The bird measures about 8 in. in length. The bill is about i^ in. By its small size, its short bill, and its dark back, the ja^ck may be distinguished at a glance from the full snipe.

The jack, difl'ering entirely in this respect from the

THE FULL SNLPE AND HIS COUSLNS 19

full snipe, is partly a vegetarian. In open weather though worms, grubs, small snails and so forth constitute his principal fare, he never neglects to consume a certain quantity of vegetable matter ; in hard weather he increases his proportion of vegetable diet to counterbalance the deficiency in the available supply of other food. It is for this reason that at times, when full snipe are starv^^ed almost to skeletons, the jack — a fact at which people often wonder — remains as plump and jolly as ever. In the hardest frost one never shoots a jack which shows signs of having suffered from privation. Such is instinct : we cannot well doubt that if the instinct of the full snipe prompted it during a lengthy frost to eat what the jack eats, the system of the one bird would assimilate it as well as the system of the other, yet the one bird never conceives the idea of meeting hard times with a make-shift diet. The jack will eat various kinds of seeds as well as grass, moss, and other herbage.

A solitary and independent bird is the jack. He selects some particular haunt and there he remains lonely and self-sufficing. Jack snipe never gather into wisps like full snipe : though a dozen jack may occupy a small piece of marsh, the movements of any one of them are always quite unconnected with the movements of any of the others. The attachment

c 2 of both jack and full snipe to certain spots will be dealt with at due length in the shooting section of the book.

While the full snipe moves like lightning when on the wing, the jack snipe's flight is but one degree removed from sluggish. The jack seems to have no fear, and never to be in a hurry. Rising without a sound — the bird is always mute during its sojourn here — a jack flits leisurely away and drops again perhaps not a hundred yards from where he was flushed. I have seen a jack, missed with both barrels, fly a distance of a couple of hundred yards or so and then turn and settle again within thirty yards of the gunner. During the daytime— he does his journeyings by night — the jack is always a bird of short flights. Not that his wing power and staying power are anywise lacking, for they carry him huge distances at the times of the spring and autumn migrations. It is simply that the bird is dull and heavy by day and has but little instinctive fear of man, and also pays but little heed to the sound of a gun or the whistling of shot.

The close-lying habit of the jack has gained him among our neighbours across the Channel the name of • the deaf -snipe,- the origin being, of course, that a bird which allows itself to be approached so nearly

THE FULL SNLPE AND HIS COUSINS 21

was credite^-with inability to hear the sound of footsteps. By anyone unfamihar with its habits, it might well be supposed that the bird was really deaf. So closely does the jack lie that one may literally almost tread upon a bird at times. Jack have often been caught with a landing net or a butterfly net when a dog has been standing at them. Yarrell mentions a case, which I can quite believe, of a jack having allowed itself to be picked up by hand before the nose of a pointer.

THE FULL SNIPE

The full snipe is met with in every part of the United Kingdom where it can find conditions suited to its tastes. Its haunts are the bog and marsh, the sides of the stream or ditch or pond, the meadow with the springy bottom, the furrow-drained grass land on heavy soils, in fact, any spot where the ground is soft enough to be easily probed by the bird's bill and where there is water, however little, near at hand. I have known snipe in very wet weather congregate on ploughed fields in preference to their usual feeding grounds.

Besides being used for drinking — the snipe is a thirsty soul — water is required by the bird for the 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 ehminating 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