Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 5 (1901).djvu/481

Rh the Snipe; yet some individuals of the species, if not Snipe in general, are capable of a performance that well deserves the name of a song. In the south of Yorkshire is a certain small bog where several pairs of Snipe breed annually. In the centre of a field adjoining the bog stands a large dead tree with only its gaunt main branches left; and it was a customary thing to see a Snipe pitch upon the summit of the topmost limb of this tree, and there give utterance, sometimes for a quarter of an hour at a stretch, to his unique song. This song was loud, vigorous, and sustained, and, though it was quite evidently an elaboration of the ringing cry so often uttered by the Snipe on pitching, it was very considerably modulated. Through the glasses it could be seen that the bill during this performance was held horizontally, and that the head was continually turned about from side to side. It was, of course, impossible to determine whether it was always the same bird that was responsible for this song; but the song was to be heard quite regularly during, at any rate, one breeding season—that of 1898; and the writer heard it again, still from the same point in the same dead tree, on the only occasion during the following spring on which he was able to visit the bog. Very possibly this singing of the Snipe is one of its normal accomplishments, but the writer has neither seen any mention of it, nor met with the phenomenon itself in any other locality.

The fact has been frequently noticed that many birds will occasionally sing on the wing which do not normally do so. This is commonly to be observed in the case of the Blackbird and Mistle-Thrush, and of the Greenfinch, Sedge-Warbler, and Wood-Wren, One thing is always noticeable about these birds when they are singing on the wing, and that is the peculiar mode of their flight. In every one of them there is a very evident preoccupation of mind; the wings give a slight and neglected stroke and appear to be unusually widely opened, while the resulting flight is slow and sailing. When the Blackbird, Mistle-Thrush, and Wood-Wren are singing on the wing, they are, as a rule, drifting across from one tree to another in a straight line; but the flight of the Greenfinch and Sedge-Warbler is undertaken for the special purpose of the song, and it follows an aimless and erratic course through the air. The Wood-Wren will frequently