3-034-793 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Months: November, 1871. 'The snipe has to get his living by digging up worms, insects, and little molluscs from the marshes, the mud of wet meadows, and the swampy edges of ponds or banks of sluggish streams. A long-continued hard frost does not suit his trade; and he seeks in the mild and variable winter of the British Islands an opportunity of procuring that food which his Scandinavian summer home will not now afford...The snipe has variegated plumage, of yellowish white and black, with stripes down the neck and breast, and across the sides, and a white belly; his feet have a pale greenish tint. In winter his hues are more ashy than after the spring moult, when they are interspersed with bright dashes of bronze...The bill of a snipe has a number of little cavities at and near the end, which contain the sensitive extremities of as many nerves; and by the fine feeling of this instrument he is enabled to detect the presence of its prey beneath the surface of the soil. He works so quickly, putting in his bill and instantly drawing it out, that he will soon have probed every likely spot in a large meadow'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.