The moon has been credited with a good deal of influence upon the behaviour of snipe; this is on the ground that they cannot feed in the dark. But what is dark to a night bird? Probably there is no such thing; certainly the fly-by-nights do not kill themselves by flying against trees, and more than that, the snipe never does feed by sight. He bores in the ground to feel for the worm; when he has felt its position, he brings out his bill and thrusts it in again in the right spot, and out comes the worm. Then he repeats the process. If these birds are not always hungry, they must stand guard over their favourite boring patches until they get so, for they rarely go away from them to rest upon foodless ground unless they are disturbed either by men, dogs, or weather.
Very few men ever excel in snipe shooting. The actual aiming at a snipe is the difficulty. He may be there when you aim, but is not there when the shot arrives. If you wait until he has done his zigzag flight, he is almost sure to be too far off. If you can shoot just above him, when his wing goes up for a twist, and at a distance of 40 or 45 yards, with No. 8 shot, you will probably kill him. That, however, is not very helpful advice, and the only thing that the author can say that is likely to be so is that the snipe becomes easy, by comparison, when he rises against the wind and shows his white breast to the gunner. The author has killed fourteen August snipe in as many consecutive shots, but he has done no such thing with November snipe on a crisp day, and it would therefore ill become him to say how it can be done, for the very good reason that he does not know.
The snipe is credited with great pace, but in shooting driven snipe it soon becomes evident that they do not require half as much allowance as a partridge. It is the twist that makes pretence that they are actually fast. They are particularly smart and quick, but distinctly not fast in the sense that a driven grouse down wind is speedy.
WOODCOCKS
Woodcock shooting over a team of spaniels is the fox-hunting of shooting, according to Colonel Peter Hawker.
It is generally stated that woodcocks are decreasing in numbers of late years, but this is possibly a mistake. At any rate, Lord Ardilaun has at Ashford made the biggest bag ever known in Ireland only eleven years ago—namely, 205 ’cock in the day; and in 1905 the record bag for Cornwall was accomplished, but this is far from being the record for England also. Still, there is no proof that because a big bag is made in one day that there are as many birds as formerly killed in any one season. Be this as it may, our method of covert shooting is now very much in favour of the woodcocks. Formerly, when they were the principal game of the coverts, the latter used to be beaten as often as it was believed there were woodcocks in them. Now this is by no means the case. Coverts are beaten once, twice, or thrice in a season, and times are fixed with no regard whatever to the woodcocks. If it is an open season, the inland woodcocks are likely enough to be there when the date for pheasant shooting comes; but if hard frost has set in the birds will have gone on to the west coasts of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, and possibly also many may have passed on into Spain. Then we say it is a bad season in England for woodcocks, but that is merely because we beat our coverts after the bird has flown. Still, possibly the best season for woodcocks in England is that which most favours the killing and also the preservation of the birds, if that is not paradoxical. When they are found all over the country in mild winters, they escape the guns for the most part, because their even distribution does not favour their being looked for of set purpose.
Comparatively few are killed in the pheasant coverts, even if many are seen. The guns are set in the line of flight of the pheasants, and whatever set purpose a migrant woodcock may have by night, his only purpose by day is to have no purpose at all. You can never trust him to go a hundred yards in any one direction, and for this reason he offers more chances to the beaters, who have no guns, than to the sportsmen who have them. On the contrary, when the frost comes early and drives the birds to those shores that know the Gulf Stream, then the woodcocks congregate in coverts, and are made the special objects of the sportsmen’s attentions. The longer the frosts and snows last the more ’cock are killed, and sometimes it happens that a stay is made to these exterminating proceedings by the abject poverty and weakness of the birds. This has occasionally been the case in Ireland, and the fact that these birds were caught by frost and snow on one side, and by the Atlantic on the other, shows that migration is not always salvation to the migrant. Just why the birds became so weak as not to be able to go forward to Spain or Africa, it is difficult to say. But possibly those that get starved in this way are the late arrivals that find themselves weakened by much flying when they first arrive on the Irish coast, and without food can go no farther. Probably those already there when the food begins to get scarce do go on.
Whether the woodcock are generally increasing or not, no doubt there are more home breeding ’cock than formerly. There is scarce a boggy birch wood in Scotland that has not its young woodcock in August, and obviously these birds are bred there. They are not then much good for the table, and if sportsmen would make a rule not to shoot them they would probably increase much faster than they do. Most of the foreign woodcocks come to us in October and November. Then they appear to settle to rest on the first land they see, but they are to be found there only for a few hours, and go on and distribute themselves over their favourite country very quickly. The sea walls and sea banks, especially when rough fringed with grass, are favourite places for these new arrivals, which in Lincolnshire are in good condition when they first come in, but are said to be poor and weak on arrival on the shores of Devon. In Ireland the first arrivals, and the majority, settle on the extreme north. Next in proportion, lighthouse information shows, they arrive by the west coast. The snipe also arrive mostly from the north, but the jack snipe come in largest numbers to the south-east coast of Ireland. This points to the conclusion that woodcock arrive mostly from Scotland, and it is suggested that those which breed farthest north first move south by stress of weather. It is also suggested that our home-bred woodcock do not remain in the winter, but move late in August or early in September. These contentions are evidently conflicting, and it is probable that the first is right, and that our home-bred birds remain where food and shelter is plentiful, and only move when they are not. The absence of home-bred birds in certain coverts in September has often been noted after they have been constantly observed in August, but this can often be accounted for by the springs running dry in the latter part of August, and available food being consequently scarce. The old birds are said to moult in September, and if this is correct it is a very good reason why they should be difficult to find then; and if this habit is invariable, it would be clear evidence against the home-breeding birds migrating in that month.
It appears that woodcock can be encouraged by planting in suitable places, and that this encouragement is not only to the migrants, but induces more birds to remain and breed here. The increase of the latter habit has been a startling and pleasing fact in natural history. Its originating cause is not known, but that an enormous increase has taken place is freely admitted. As the birds themselves have started this habit, it appears that it is only necessary to spare large numbers of these natives to still further increase the number of home-breeding ’cock.
But no way of distinguishing them when on the wing seems to be possible, although most useful work has been done by the Duke of Northumberland, at Alnwick, in placing a metal ring round a leg of all young woodcock found there. Amongst other things thus established is that the movements of birds seem to be governed by no law capable of definition. For instance, a bird bred at Alnwick has been shot in the Highlands of Scotland, whereas others have been shot in the extreme south of England, and another in Ireland. But the strangest part of the story is that most of them do not appear to have been shot at all. Perhaps in that fact may lie the explanation why the home breeding of woodcocks increases.