In the neighborhood of Amherstburg, Canada west, they appear very early; often in February of mild seasons, always in March; and there may breed, and remain until banished by severe cold. I shot one there myself last autumn, the last bird of the season, very late in November, I believe on the 28th or 29th; and with the plover, the Hudsonian godwit, and the Esquimaux curlew, they were seen there this spring in the first days of March.
Around Quebec, I have shot English snipe on the uplands, in fallow fields and rushy pastures—for the grass in the morasses does not begin to shoot in those far northern latitudes, so as to afford them shelter, until much later in the year—in the end of April and the beginning of May; but they arrive there only by small scattered whisps, or single birds, tarry a few short days, and flit onward to their unknown destination.
This, then, is their mystery—that in no known land are they perennial; in no ascertained region—so far as I can learn—are they positively known to breed in the vast concourses which must breed somewhere, in order to supply the prodigious flights which issue yearly from the northern regions of three continents, Europe, America, and Asia, to fill the warmer countries, and to be slaughtered literally by myriads, season after season, without undergoing much if any visible diminution of numbers.
Ever, in all places, in all countries, in all continents, which they visit in spring, they are seen pressing northward still, from March until May; no one being able to say here ends their tide of emigration, this is their chosen resting place.
Their breeding season is from the middle of May to the beginning of July; on the 4th of which month I have shot young birds, with the pin-feathers undeveloped, as large as the parents—these birds having been hatched on the ground whereon I killed them. Indeed, it is my opinion, that all birds which tarry in our latitudes beyond the 10th of May, either do breed with us, or would do so but for the persecution of the pot-hunter—all which intend to steer farther north having departed ere that time.
About the 15th of July the returning hordes, young birds and old together, full grown and in fine condition, begin to reappear in the marshes of Quebec and its vicinity, which may be said to be the extremest northern point from which we have continuous and authentic annual information of their appearance. At that time the slaughter of the snipe on the marshes of Chateau Richer, and of the islands farther down the St. Lawrence, is prodigious. There they linger until the frosts become so severe as to drive them from their feeding-grounds, which generally takes place early in September, from which time, throughout that month, all October, and a portion—more or less according to the season—of November, and even December, every likely swamp, morass, and feeding-ground of Canada west, of the western, midland, and eastern states, from which they are not persecuted and banished by the incessant banging of pot-hunters and idle village boys, swarms with them, in quantities sufficient to afford sport to hundreds, and a delicacy to thousands of our inhabitants, if they were protected from useless and unmeaning persecution, by which alone they are prevented from being as numerous among us as at any former period.
For I am well assured, that, unlike the woodcock, which, breeding in our midst, and dwelling with us for months at a time, is annually slaughtered while breeding, hatching, or immature, and is thus in rapid progress toward extirpation—the snipe, unmolested in its breeding-grounds, is not diminished in its numerical production, but is rendered scarcer in thickly settled districts, nigh to large towns, by incessant harassing, which drives it to remoter and securer feeding-grounds.
I do not mean by this, however, to assert that the abolition of spring snipe-shooting would not be an advantage—on the contrary, I am convinced that it would; although well assured that no such measure can be hoped at the hands of our legislators; for, as the snipe ordinarily lays four eggs, the destruction of each one of the breeders on their way northward, of course diminishes the stock of the coming season by five birds.
So much for the times and places of the snipe’s migrations. Of his appearance or characteristics—so well is he known—it is almost useless to speak! It may, however, be well to observe that although commonly termed the English Snipe, our bird is a thorough native American, differing from the bird of Europe in being about one inch smaller in every way, and in having two more feathers, sixteen instead of fourteen, in the tail. In other minute, but still permanent, and therefore characteristic distinctions, it differs from the Asiatic and Antarctic snipes; although in their rapid, zigzag flight and shrill squeak when flushed; in their irregular soaring through the air in gloomy weather; in their perpendicular towering and plumb descent, their drumming with the wing-feathers, and bleating with the voice, during the breeding-season, all the species or varieties so closely resemble each other that they are far more easily confounded than distinguished by the unscientific sportsman.
The American bird has, however, two or three habits, during early spring-shooting, which I have never observed in the European species, nor seen noticed in any work of natural history; the first of these is frequenting underwood and bushy covert abounding in springs and intersected by cattle-tracks, and occasionally even high woods, during wild, stormy, and dark weather, especially when snow-squalls are driving; and this is a habit of the bird meriting the attention of the sportsman, as in such weather, when he finds no birds on the open and unsheltered marshes, he will do well to beat the neighboring underwoods, if any, and if not, the nearest swampy woodlands; by doing which he will oftentimes fill his bag when he despairs of any sport. The second habit is that of alighting, not unfrequently, on rail-fences, or stumps, and even on high trees, which I think I can safely assert that the European bird never does; and the third is the utterance, when in the act of skimming over the meadows, after soaring, bleating, and drumming for an hour at a stretch in mid air, of “a sharp reiterated chatter, consisting of a quick, jarring repetition of the syllables, kek-kek-kek-kek-kek, many times in succession, with a rising and falling inflection, like that of a hen which has just laid an egg.”[[5]]