AN ECCENTRIC SNIPE.
May I put a query to migrationists about a bird whose movements have long seemed to me peculiarly" eccentric " (an adjective especially applied to snipe by the mediaeval monks who wrote at Crowland). Has the "summer snipe" or green sandpiper any definite principle of migration ? I was much interested this year in the fate of a particular pair that some of us watched on the Arrow in Herefordshire. Their first nest in all probability was washed away by the floods, which had many curious effects. They washed away all the chrysalids of the May-fly, and the May-fly season from the fisherman's outlook was as poor as the Alder season was rich. They ruined many a moorhen's nest. One observer on the banks of the Wye, at the date of one particularly rapid rise, saw literally dozens of moorhens' eggs float past him. Happily birds, whether rail or piper, are persistent : "What is our failure here but a triumph's evidence " !
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