[7] I have lately observed that when the snipe descends with quivering wings, some outer feathers of the tail on each side are shot out from it in a most noticeable manner, making—or looking like—two little curved tufts. They are not seen before, which seems to me strong evidence. The tail itself is fanned.
Snipe, as already observed, descend to the ground in order to alight upon it in a manner quite different to the oblique downward-shooting sweeps, with wings extended, whether vibrating or not, as practised in ordinary nuptial flight. There are three ways, possibly more; but three I have seen. In the first the bird shoots gracefully down, with the wings pressed to the sides, as already described. In the second the wings are raised straight, or almost straight, above the back, and this gives, perhaps, a still more graceful appearance. The third way is not nearly so usual a one as the other two—in fact, I only recall having seen it once. In this the wings are but half spread (whilst held in the ordinary manner) and motionless, and the bird descends in several sweeps to one side or the other, something after the manner in which a kite comes to the ground. No sound attends any of these forms of descent.
The cry of the snipe which I have alluded to, is of a curious nature, something like the word "chack-wood, chack-wood, chack-wood, chack-wood," constantly repeated, and having a regular rise and fall in it, which is why I call it a "see-saw note." Sometimes, when the bird is a little way off, it sounds very much like a swishing of the wings; but when these are really swished, as they often are—purposely, I believe, and as a nuptial performance—the difference is at once apparent. "Two snipes will often fly chasing each other, uttering this note, and making from time to time the loud swishing with the wings. Often, too, there will be a short, harsh cry—harsh, but with that wild, loved harshness that lives in the notes of birds that haunt the waste—which is instantly followed by a swishing of the wings, making quite a music in the air. When at its loudest and harshest, this cry, which then becomes a scream, is quite an extraordinary sound, having a mewing intonation in it suggesting a cat as the performer. Yet it is nothing so extraordinary as some notes of the snipe which I have heard, mostly during the winter, and which are indeed—at least they have struck me as being so—amongst the most wonderful that ever issued from the throat of bird. I will recur to them again when I come to the moor-hen (for it was in his company I heard them), a bird that is itself as a whole orchestra of peculiar brazen instruments. These wild cries and screams blend harmoniously with the curious, monotonous, yet musical bleating, and come finely out of the gloom of the evening thickening into night, as it descends over the wide expanse of the fenlands. Best heard then—and there: the darkening sky, the wide and wind-swept waste of coarse tufted grass, amongst which brown dock-stalks stand tall-ly and thinly, the long, raised bank with its thin belt of reeds beyond, emphasising rather than relieving the flatness, the lonely thorn-bush, the stunted willow or two, the black line of alders marking the course of the sluggish river, the wind, the sad whispered music in the grasses, the wilder music in the air, the aloneness, the drearness—such voices fit such scenes."
The male and female snipe both bleat, but the feathers in the tail which produce the sound are less modified in the female, and the sound which they produce is said to be different in consequence. That there must be a difference would seem to follow of necessity; but, according to my own experience, it requires a nice ear to distinguish the bleating of the one sex from that of the other. There is, indeed, some slight difference in the sound made by each individual snipe, but I only once remember hearing one bleating with a markedly different tone. Here the sound had a lower, softer, and deeper intonation, and was, to my mind, a more musical sound altogether. When heard just before or after the bleat of another snipe the difference was very marked, but I considered it to be rather an individual than a sexual distinction, for I do not know that there is any reason to suppose that the female snipe bleats less frequently than the male except when she is sitting on her eggs.
Snipe, when bleating, fly round and round in a wide irregular circle, and for a long time one will not overstep the invisible boundary so as to encroach upon the domain of the other. It seems—but the illusion will be broken after a time—as though each bird had his allotment in the fields of air and knew that he would be guilty of a rudeness in entering that of another. Thus, though three or four of them may be flying and bleating in the neighbourhood, it is often difficult to watch more than one at a time with anything like closeness of observation, a difficulty which is often increased by the failing light; for, in my own experience, snipe bleat best either in the early—though not very early—morning, or when evening has begun to close in. To follow their wide, swift, eccentric circle of flight one must keep turning round on a fixed point, and this, amidst swamp and grass-tufts, is difficult to do without losing one's balance. Yet still one watches and turns and strains one's eyes into the darkness, unable to go, for one loves to see that small, swift, vocal shadow appearing out of the great, still, silent ones and disappearing, again, into them. When thus disporting, each within its own charmed circle, the downward rush and bleat of one snipe will often for a long time immediately precede or follow that of another, bleat answering to bleat, till at length the duet is broken and complicated by a third intermingling voice. At last a bird, trampling on etiquette, will flit into the circle of the one you are watching, and the two, excitedly pursuing each other with "chack-wood, chack-wood," or, with the harsh, wild scream and loud swish of pinions, will speed off and vanish together.
No doubt the male snipes bleat against each other in rivalry, but it would also seem (a sentence, I confess, which I never use when I have an undoubted instance to give) that the male and female bleat to one another connubially, or in a lover-like manner. Here, however, is an instance (as I translate it) of the one bleating whilst the other sits listening and responding vocally on the ground.
"A snipe flies with a scream over the marshy meadows. As he passes one little swampy bit another snipe utters from out of it the see-sawey, 'chack-wood' note, in answer, as it appears, to the scream. The first snipe now flies round about over the meadows and land adjoining, bleating, whilst the other one in the grass continues to see-saw."
Many birds, as is well known, have the instinct, when suddenly discovered with their young ones, of tumbling over or fluttering along the ground as though they had sustained some injury which had rendered them unable to fly, so that the murderous or thievish longings of "the paragon of animals" being diverted from their progeny to themselves, the former may take thought and escape. The nightjar, partridge, and, especially, the wild-duck, are good instances of this, and in every case where I have come upon them under the requisite conditions they have never failed to show me their shrewd estimate of man's nature. With all these three birds, however, it has always been the presence of the young that has moved them to act in this manner, their conduct during incubation being quite different. The instance which I am now going to bring forward with regard to the snipe has this peculiarity, if it be one, that the bird was hatching her eggs at the time and was still engaged in doing so a few days afterwards, proving that the young were not just on the point of coming out on the occasion when she was first disturbed. As I noted all down the instant after its occurrence, the reader may rely upon having here just exactly what this snipe did.
"This morning a snipe flew out of some long reedy grass within a few feet of me, and almost instantly taking the ground again—but now on the smooth, green meadow—spun round over it, now here, now there, its long bill lying along the ground as though it were the pivot on which it turned, and uttering loud cries all the while. Having done this for a minute or so, it lay, or rather crouched, quite still on the ground, its head and beak lying along it, its neck outstretched, its legs bent under it, with the body rising gradually, till the posterior part, with the tail, which it kept fanned out, was right in the air. And in this strange position it kept uttering a long, low, hoarse note, which, together with its whole demeanour, seemed to betoken great distress. It remained thus for some minutes before flying away, during which time I stood still, watching it closely, and when it was gone, soon found the nest, with four eggs in it, in the grass-tuft from which it had flown. Its action whilst spinning over the ground was very like that of the nightjar when put up from her young ones." It is to be noted here that this snipe flew a very little way from the nest, and when on the ground did not travel over it to any extent, but only in a small circle just at first, after which it kept in one place. The Arctic skua (Richardson's skua, as some call it, but I hate such appropriative titles—as though a species could be any man's property!) behaves in the same kind of way, for, lying along on its breast, with its wings spread out and beating the ground, it utters plaintive little pitiful cries, keeping always in the same, or nearly the same, spot. This has, of course, the effect of drawing one's attention to the bird, and away from the eggs or young (whether it acts thus in regard to both I am not quite sure, but believe that it does), but the effect produced on one—though here, of course, as throughout, I only speak for myself—is that the bird is in great mental distress—prostrated as it were—rather than acting with any conscious "intent to deceive." The same is the case with the nightjar, whose sudden spinning about over the ground in a manner much more resembling a maimed bluebottle or cockchafer than a bird, seems to proceed from some violent nervous shock or mental disturbance. The same, too, though in a lesser degree, may be said of the partridge, and in all cases it is obvious that the bird is very much excited and ausser sich.
Darwin, if I remember rightly,[8] found it difficult to believe that birds, when they thus distract our attention from their young to themselves, do so with a full consciousness of what they are doing and why they are doing it. When the female wild-duck, however, acts in this manner, it is difficult, I think, to escape from this conclusion. She flaps for a long way over the surface of the water, pausing every now and again and waiting, as though to see the effect of her ruse, and continuing her tactics as soon as you get up to her. Having thus led you a long distance away, she rises, and leaving the river, flies in an extended circle, which will ultimately bring her back to it by the other bank when you are well out of the way. The chicks, meanwhile, have (of course) scuttled in amongst the reeds and rushes, though they often take some little while to conceal themselves. She acts thus on a river or broad stretch of water, which enables her to keep you in sight for some time. But it is obvious that if you come upon her with her family in a very narrow and sharply winding stream, the first bend of it will hide you from her, and she would then, assuming that she is acting intelligently, have all the agony of mind of not knowing whether her plan was succeeding or not. It was in such a situation that I met her only last spring, and to my surprise—and indeed, admiration—instead of flapping along the water as I have always known her to do before in such a contre-temps, she instantly flew out on to the opposite bank, and began to flap and struggle along the flat marshy meadow-land, of course in full view. I crossed the stream and pursued her, allowing her to "fool me to the top of my bent," and this she appeared to me to do, or to think she was doing, on much the same kind of indicia as one would go by in the case of a man. Now, unless this bird had wished to keep me in view, and thus judge of the effect of her stratagem, or unless she feared that "out of sight" would be "out of mind" with regard to herself (but this would be to credit her with yet greater powers of reflection), why should she have left the water, the element in which she usually and most naturally performs these actions, to modify them on the land? Yet to suppose that it has ever occurred suddenly, and as a new idea, to any bird to act a pious fraud of this kind, would be to suppose wonders, and also to be unevolutionary (almost as serious a matter nowadays as to be un-English).