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SCOLOPAX, SABINES, SABINE’S-SNIPE.

Some years ago I killed what I am now persuaded was a Sabine’s-Snipe, but unfortunately it was not preserved, for hanging it up in the larder with the other birds I had killed, I found to my great mortification that the cook had stripped it of every feather before I was aware, and before I had noted down the markings of the plumage.

The dry weather of August, 1820, had driven a flock of the Golden Plover from the moors to the banks of the river Wharfe, and on the 14th of that month I had been out with my gun, endeavouring to shoot some of them.  On my return I sprung this Snipe from a pond near home, and killed it.  When I picked it up, I was astonished to find a Snipe with the plumage of a Woodcock, and showed it to a friend of mine, who is a good practical ornithologist, but he was as much puzzled as myself to give it a name; so not being able to find a description of it in any books to which we had access, we jumped to the conclusion that it was a hybrid between the Snipe and the Woodcock, and called it a bastard Woodcock.

According to the recollection I have of it, it was as large as the solitary Snipe, and the bill was a little longer; the general appearance of the plumage on the wings and back resembled a dark-coloured Woodcock; but under the wings the fine blue inner coverts exactly resembled those of the Snipe.  In those days I had no idea of the value attached to rare birds, nor did I know anything of the art of preserving birds, or of bird-preservers, and no doubt some of these gentlemen will pronounce me a great Goth when I tell them that what I regretted most, when I found that the bird was plucked, was the loss of the wings, the feathers of which I wanted to dress artificial flies with.  Three days after I had killed this, I saw another in a ditch adjoining Sir Henry Ibbetson’s park, at Denton, but being in his preserve I had no opportunity of procuring it.  I had never seen one since, and until I had seen the sixth edition of Bewick’s “Birds,” I was unable to make out its name, about which I may still be mistaken. (May 29th, 1834.)

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FISH AND OTHER RIVER PHENOMENA.

A writer in the “British Naturalist” says, that “fish don’t feed, and therefore we may conclude they don’t discern in sunny weather.”  If the author had ever been a May-fly-fisher he would have known that bright weather and clear water were essentially necessary to his success.

This fly is one of the best baits I know for large Trout, and is much used by the anglers in some of the rivers in Yorkshire (perhaps in other counties also), where two methods of fishing it are practised.  The one is bobbing, which with one sort of bait or another is universal, and therefore needs no description.  However, it is always practised in bright weather.  In the other method (which I believe is peculiar to the North of England) the May-fly (stone-fly) is fished