LYMNOCRYPTES MINIMUS (Brünnich)
JACK SNIPE
Contributed by Francis Charles Robert Jourdain
HABITS
Sometime during the spring of 1919, probably in April, a specimen of this snipe was taken by a native on St. Paul Island, Pribilof Islands, Alaska, and presented to G. Dallas Hanna. The bird is now in the collection of the California Academy of Sciences, and constitutes the only record for North America. It is, however, a widely distributed species, breeding not only in Arctic Europe, but also across the greater part of northern Asia, and wintering south to north Africa and southern Asia.
Courtship.—Of the courtship actions in the strict sense of the words we have practically no observations, as this species has rarely been kept in captivity and then singly and for short periods. The nuptial flight is, however, more conspicuous and was described in the oft-quoted letter of John Wolley, written from Muoniovara on November 27th, 1853, to W. C. Hewitson (1856), and published in the third edition of "Coloured Illustrations of the Eggs of British Birds" by that writer. To Wolley belongs the credit of being the first to discover and bring to the knowledge of naturalists the eggs of this species, for the eggs previously ascribed to this species from localities much farther south were not by any means satisfactorily authenticated. Wolley had been for some time at his headquarters on the borders of Sweden and what is now Finland, when, on June 17th, 1853, while working the great marsh at Muonioniska, he first heard the jack snipe, though as he states:
At the time I could not at all guess what it was—an extraordinary sound unlike anything I had heard before. I could not tell from what direction it came, and it filled me with a curious suspense. My Finnish interpreter thought it was a Capercally (Tetrao urogallus) and at the time I could not contradict him; but soon I found that it was a small bird gliding at a wild pace at a great height over the marsh. I know not how better to describe the noise than by likening it to the cantering of a horse in the distance over a hard hollow road; it came in fours with a similar cadence and a like clear, yet hollow, sound. The same day we found a nest which seemed of a kind unknown to me. The next morning I went to Kharto-uoma with a good strength of beaters. I kept them as well as I could in line, myself in the middle, my Swedish traveling companion on one side, and the Finn talker on the other. Whenever a bird was put off its nest the man who saw it was to pass on the word and the whole line was to stand whilst I went to examine the eggs and take them at once or observe the bearings of the spot for another visit as might be necessary. We had not been many hours in the marsh when I saw a bird get up before Herr Saloman, and I marked it down. In the meantime the nest was found and when I came up the owner was declared to have appeared striped on the back and not white over the tail. A sight of the eggs, as they lay untouched, raised my expectations to the highest pitch. I went to the spot where I had marked the bird, put it up again, found that it was indeed a jack snipe, and again saw it after a short, low flight drop suddenly into cover; once more it rose a few feet from where it had settled, I fired and in a minute had in my hand a true jack snipe, the undoubted parent of the nest of eggs. In the course of the day and night I found three more nests and examined the birds of each. One allowed me to touch it with my hand before it rose, and another only got up when my foot was within 6 inches of it. It was very fortunate that I was thus able satisfactorily to identify so fine a series of eggs, for they differ considerably from one another.
The great German ornithologist Naumann (1887) also describes the nuptial flight, as observed by him in still weather on spring evenings; as scarcely audible at over a hundred paces and recalling the tapping noise made by the death-watch beetle. He writes the sound as "Tettettettettett," etc., and says each note lasts six seconds at a time, as the bird sweeps over the marsh now rising and then falling in tone as it is uttered.
V. Russon, the Estonian ornithologist, also observed the flight on a marsh near Kurkull, in Estonia, and noticed that the snipe rose high in the air and gradually descended again after a flight of several hundred yards. He compares the sound to the words: "Lok-toggi, lok-toggi, lok-toggi," which certainly agree with the impression given by Wolley's graphic description. He says the local names current in the district are derived from the resemblance the bird's notes bear to the rattle of a dilapidated wagon wheel. In the night the jack snipe is silent, but the display begins again with the first glimmering of dawn, but does not as a rule last long. The note described by Naumann he only heard on two occasions just before the bird settled in the swamp and believed it to be caused by rapid snapping of the bill.
Nesting.—Like the common snipe, the jack snipe breeds in the marshes, choosing a slight hollow in a fairly dry, grassy, or sedge-grown spot, but close to open swamp. Wolley describes the five nests seen by him as being all alike in structure, "made loosely of little pieces of grass and equisetum not at all woven together, with a few old leaves of the dwarf birch." It is an extremely close sitter, not stirring from its eggs till almost trodden on, while one bird actually allowed Wolley to touch it with his hand before it flew. The breeding season is late, for eggs are rarely met with before mid-June and have been recorded throughout July and even in August.
Ralph Chislett (1927) has published his recent experience with the nesting habits of the jack snipe, from which the following is quoted: