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
