Aretas A. Saunders, in his notes, says that—
After the eggs are laid the female often answers this sound with a long call okee okee okee repeated 8 or 10 times and resembling the "buckwheat" call of the guinea hen. I believe the female is sitting on the eggs when she calls this way, for I have found the nest by locating the position of the sound at night and returning in the morning. The nest is usually in about the center of the male's circle of flight.
Nesting.—As with the woodcock my personal experience with the nesting of the Wilson snipe has been limited to one nest, found in the Magdalen Islands on June 18, 1904. The nest was found by watching the bird go to it in the East Point marshes. It was on dry ground in a little clump of grass, under some low and rather open bayberry bushes, on the edge of a boggy arm of the marsh, which extended up into the woods; it was built up about 2 inches above the ground and was made of short, dead straws and dead bayberry leaves; it measured 6 inches in outside and 3 inches in inside diameter. The four eggs which it contained blended perfectly with their surroundings and although in plain sight, they were not easily seen. P. B. Philipp (1925), who has found many snipe's nests in the Magdalen Islands, where he says the species is increasing, writes:
The nesting begins in the last 10 days of May, and is a simple affair. Usually wet marshy ground is selected, preferably with low brush and grass with lumps or tussocks rising above the bog water. The nest is a shallow hollow made in the grass or moss of one of these lumps, lined with broken bits of dead grass and sometimes with dead leaves.
William L. Kells (1906) gives a graphic account of finding a nest of the Wilson snipe in southern Ontario, as follows:
On the 17th of May, 1905, as I was passing through a patch of low ground overgrown with second growth willows, a rather large-sized bird flushed from a spot a few feet from where I had jumped over a neck of water. I did not see the exact place from which the bird had flown, but the fluttering sound of her wing caught my ear, and looking ahead I saw the creature, who with outspread tail and wings, was fluttering on the damp earth, and with her long bill down in the mud, was giving vent to a series of squeaking sounds. I knew at once that this bird had flushed from a nest, and that the object of her actions was to draw my attention from something that she was very desirous to conceal; but a little research revealed a nest containing four beautiful eggs. A clump of willows a little elevated stood about 6 feet from the pool over which the bird had flown, and midway between the water and the willows, which overhung it the nest was placed. This was simply a slight depression made by the bird in the moss and dry grass, and except from its concealed situation and being a little more expanded, there was no particular distinction between it and those of the more familiar killdeer plover and spotted sandpiper, though the lining was probably of a warmer texture, being of fine dry grass, while the eggs, as in the case of all the ground nesting waders, were arranged with the small ends inward.
A Colorado nest is thus described by Robert B. Rockwell (1912):
This nest was located on (and above) the surface of slightly damp ground at the edge of a good-sized area of very soft, boggy land formed by the seepage under the dyke of the Big Barr Lake. It was built in the center of a tussock of grass about 8 inches in length and was a very neat, well-shaped, and cupped nest composed entirely of fine dry grass. In construction it was far superior to any shore bird's nest I have ever seen, being so compactly and strongly put together that it was possible to remove it from the nesting site without injury. In general appearance the nest itself is not unlike certain sparrows' nests.
A nest photographed for me by F. Seymour Hersey, near the mouth of the Yukon River, Alaska, was in a very wet spot on the border of a marsh; it was a deep hollow prettily arched over with dry grasses at the base of a small willow bush.