Breeding range.—Much of Europe and Asia. From Great Britain and Scandinavia (up to 70° N.) throughout northern Europe and Siberia. South, mainly in the mountains, to the Pyrenees, Alps, northern Italy, southern Russia, Turkestan, Yarkand, and southeastern Mongolia. A few breed in the Azores, northwestern Africa, and India. Replaced by allied forms in Iceland, the Faroes, in tropical Africa, and in northeastern Asia.
Winter range.—Great Britain, the Mediterranean basin, Madeira, Canaries, Azores, Africa (south to Senegambia on the west and Abyssinia on the east), Arabia, Sokotra, southern Asia, Japan, Borneo, Formosa, and the Philippine Islands.
Casual records.—The only North American record, a specimen said to have been taken in Canada, is very doubtful. This and the Greenland and Bermuda records are probably referrable to the Iceland form, faeroeensis.
Egg dates.—Great Britain: 70 records, March 3 to August 21; 35 records, April 29 to May 25. Iceland: 16 records, May 10 to June 6; 8 records, May 26 to June 3.
CAPELLA GALLINAGO DELICATA (Ord)
WILSON SNIPE
HABITS
The above species, with its several varieties, enjoys a world-wide distribution and is universally well known. The American subspecies is widely distributed from coast to coast and occurs more or less commonly, at one season or another, in nearly every part of North America. It was formerly exceedingly abundant, but its numbers have been sadly depleted during the past 50 years by excessive shooting. Alexander Wilson first called attention to the characters, size, and number of tail feathers, which distinguished our bird from the European. But they are so much alike that it seems best to regard them as subspecies, rather than as distinct species.
Spring.—The snipe is an early migrant, leaving its winter quarters just below the frost line, just as soon as the northern frost goes out of the ground, about as early as the woodcock. When the warm spring rains have softened the meadows, when the hylas have thawed out and are peeping in the pond holes, when the cheerful okalee of the redwings is heard in the marshes and when the herring are running up the streams to spawn, then we need not look in vain for the coming of the snipe. Low, moist meadow lands, or wet pastures frequented by cattle, are favorite haunts, where their splashings and borings are frequently seen among the cow tracks. They are also found in high, bushy, wet pastures, or in the vicinity of spring-fed brooks among scattered clumps of willows, huckleberries or alders.
Courtship.—On the wings of the south wind comes the first wisp of snipe, the will-o-the-wisp of the marshes, here to-day and gone to-morrow, coming and going under the cover of darkness. All through the spring migration and all through the nesting season we may hear the weird winnowing sound of the snipe's courtship flight, a tremulous humming sound, loud and penetrating, audible at a long distance. One is both thrilled and puzzled when he hears it for the first time, for it seems like a disembodied sound, the sighing of some wandering spirit, until the author is discovered, a mere speck, sweeping across the sky. The sound resembles the noise made by a duck's wings in rapid flight, a rapidly pulsating series of notes, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, increasing and then decreasing again in intensity. It has been termed the "bleating" of the snipe, but this does not seem to describe it so well as "winnowing." J. R. Whitaker, with whom I hunted snipe in Newfoundland, told me that both sexes indulge in this performance and George M. Sutton (1923) suggested the possibility of it.