Audubon's Birds/BIRDSVER1_3.BIN/dp/0059/00595.txt

Text File | 1992-08-27 | 23KB | 341 lines

$Unique_ID{BRD00595}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Wilson's Snipe.--Common Snipe}
$Subject{Scolopacinae; Scolopax; Gallinago; Wilsonii; gallinago; Wilson's Snipe;
Common Snipe}
$Journal{Birds of America:  Volume V}
$Volume{Vol. 5:339-346}
$Family{Scolopacinae}
$Genus{Scolopax; Gallinago}
$Species{Wilsonii; gallinago}
$Common_Name{Wilson's Snipe; Common Snipe}
$Log{
Plate CCCL*00595P1.scf
Family*00565.txt
Genus*00594.txt
}

       Portions copyright (c) Creative Multimedia Corp., 1990-91, 1992

                       B I R D S   O F   A M E R I C A .

                    By John James Audubon, F. R. SS. L. & E.

                   ------------------------------------------
                                    VOL.  V.
                        --------------------------------


                         WILSON'S SNIPE.--COMMON SNIPE.
                                [Common Snipe.]


                            SCOLOPAX WILSONII, Temm.
                             [Gallinago gallinago.]


                         PLATE CCCL.--MALE AND FEMALES.


     The summer range of the Common American Snipe extends northward to a
considerable distance beyond the limits of the United States.  During the
breeding season it is not to be found in our Southern Districts, much less does
it breed on the borders of the Mississippi, as has been alleged by some writers.
It may indeed sometimes happen that a pair is found during summer in the
mountainous districts of the Carolinas; but occurrences of this kind are rare,
and are probably caused by one of the birds being disabled, and so prevented
from prosecuting its journey farther northward, although not incapacitated for
reproduction.  Some pairs are more frequently met with in Virginia, Maryland and
Pennsylvania, either with eggs or with young, but the great body of this species
goes farther north for the purpose of breeding.  In the State of Maine, they
become tolerably abundant at this season, and as you proceed eastward you find
them more numerous.  In Nova Scotia they are plentiful during summer, and there
they breed in all convenient places.
     In these northern districts, the Snipe begins to lay its eggs in the early
part of June.  The swampy parts of the extensive moss-covered marshes in
elevated situations afford it places of security and comfort, in which it is not
likely to be disturbed by man, and finds immediately around it an abundance
of food.  The nest itself is a mere hollow in the moss, scantily inlaid with a
few grasses.  The eggs, which, like those of many of the Tringas, are four,
and placed with the small ends together, measure one inch and five-eighths
by one and one-eighth, being pyriform, with the tip somewhat inflated.  The
ground colour is a yellowish-olive, pretty thickly spotted and blotched with
light and dark umber, the markings increasing in size as they approach the
large end, where they form a circle.  The young, like those of the Woodcock,
leave the nests as soon as hatched, and so resemble those of the Common
Snipe of Europe, Scolopax Gallinago, that the same description
answers for both, they being covered with down of different tints of brown
and greyish-yellow.  The bill is at this age short, very soft and easily bent
by the least pressure; nor does it acquire its full growth before winter, and
its length differs in different apparently full grown individuals, by half an
inch or even three-fourths.  They seem to feed at first on minute insects
collected on the surface of the mires, or amid the grass and moss; but as they
grow older, and the bill becomes firmer and larger, they probe the ground
like their parents, and soon become expert at this operation, introducing the
bill at every half inch or so of the oozy mire, from which they principally
obtain their food.  In the Middle States, this Snipe, however, has been
found breeding in meadows, as well as in the State of Maine; and it also
nestles in the mountainous districts of these parts of the Union.  I never
had the good fortune to meet with a nest in Pennsylvania, although I have
known several instances of a pair breeding not far from Mill Grove on the
Perkioming.
     In the Western Country this bird arrives from the north early in October,
alighting in the low meadows watered by warm springs, and along the borders of
ponds and small secluded rivulets, sometimes in the corn-fields after a
continuance of rainy weather, but never in the woods or any place from which it
cannot easily make its escape when approached.  In Kentucky it often remains all
winter, and is at times very abundant.  Farther south, it is more plentiful,
especially in the lower parts of Louisiana, where it is named "cache cache" by
the Creoles, and over the whole country between that State and the Carolinas.
During winter, it is not uncommon in Louisiana to meet with it in flocks of
considerable numbers, as is also the case in South Carolina, where the grounds
of the rice-planter afford it abundance of food.  In some fields well known to
my Charleston friends, as winter retreats of the Snipe, it is shot in great
numbers.  At times it is so much less careful about concealing itself than at
others, that it is not at all uncommon to see it walking about over its wet
feeding-grounds, and on such occasions many are killed.  In such places I have
found these birds by fifties and hundreds in fields of a few acres.  At the
first shots, dozens in succession would take to wing, each emitting its cry of
wau-aik, after which they would rise in the air, gradually collect, fly around a
few times to the distance of some hundred yards, and returning pitch towards the
ground, and alight, with the velocity of an arrow, not many yards from the spot
where they had previously been.  In a few minutes they would all disperse, to
seek for food.  So much are they at times attached to particular spots, that the
sportsmen continue to shoot them until their number is reduced to a few, which
having perhaps been several times shot at, become extremely wary, and are left
to entice others to join them, so that another day's sport may be obtained.  It
is not rare to find some of these birds in the immediate vicinity of Charleston,
when they are pursued by the younger gunners, and sometimes by keen sportsmen.
I have known eight or ten procured by one person in a short time, between that
city and the race-ground, which is scarcely a mile distant.  They are also
abundant in the wet savannahs in the Floridas, from which they retire a few
weeks earlier than from Louisiana and the Carolinas, where some remain until the
beginning of April.  During the whole of the winter months, these birds are
observed to ramble from one place to another, and a field which yesterday
contained a good number, has only a few to-day, and to-morrow may be quite
deserted.  But before the end of a week, there you will find them again, as
abundant as at first.  They rarely visit salt waters, and never resort to the
interior of the woods.
     The flight of the Snipe while travelling to some distance, is performed at
a considerable elevation, by regular and quickly repeated beats of the wings.
Yet they do not appear as if pursuing a direct course, for every now and then
they deviate a little to either side.  They pass over rapidly, however, and are
able to travel to a great distance in a short time.  Their migrations, although
performed singly, or in small parties of a single family, may be said to be in a
manner continuous, as in the course of a few days a whole section of country, in
which none had been seen for several months, becomes well supplied with them.
When surprised by the sportsman, or any other enemy, they usually rise at one
spring, dash through the air in a zig-zag course, a few feet from the ground,
emit their cry when about twenty yards distant, and at times continue to employ
this cunning mode of escape for sixty or seventy yards, after which they mount
into the air, and perform the rounds already described.  I have found the
instant at which they utter their note of alarm the be