Daily Yellowstone journal. [volume] (Miles City, Mont.) 1882-1893, 1886-05-07
sNIPe IN THE SPRING TIME.
Th.ir Mysterious Arrival and Departure
Erratlc Movements.

Their Mysterious Arrival and Departure
Erratic Movements.
Nobody knows when the snipe come.
Nobody ever saw them come, or leave
either, for that matter. They are as
mysterious and silent in their arrival
and departure as disembodied spirits.
They evidently migrate by night, rding
i'm on the first warm wave from the
south after the earliest spring rains have
accomplished their mission with the
frost in the earth. You may visit the
snipe grounds to-day, and beat them up
and down and across and back again
until your legs wear out, and never
jump a bird or hear single "skeap," the
inevitable plant of the startled snipe.
But tomorrow you go again and you
find the meadow full of them. But if
the temperature is not just right they
are to be found only in isolated punches
of four and five. They are uneasy in
their habits. and will flush away out of
gunshot, the first "skeap" sometimes be-
ing the admonition for every jack in the
field TO rise. Under such conditions
they are up like brown and white
streak; their notes are sharp, disguised
and spiteful, and of they go, flying low
at first, but gradually ascending until
they are but mosquitoes against the
overarching background of blue.
Here have known them to fly for
hours in the most irregular preregrina-
tions, making great curviforms in their
aerial diversions, now shooting off out
of range of vision, but unexpectedly
making their appearance again and i'm
mediately overhead, as if dropped from
the upper spaces, so cratic and be-
wildering are their movements. At ir-
regular intervals during this flight that
distinct but far-sounding gutteral whir.
that tremulous hoo-oooo-oo breaks upon
the ear, which wierd sound is made
every now and then by the bird beating
its sides with inconceivable rapidity with
its wings during il curyetings in the air.
There is no telling what snipe may do;
his little shapely head is full of eccen-
trio notions, and he may drop down
within few feet of you, fitting dudishly
back in the reeds with the noiselessness
Of a sprite or continue his reticulated
antics in the air until he becomes the
veriest speck in the sky and then van
ishes for good.
At other times you find them lazy and
sluggish, and lying like lead, in fact
almost compelling you 10 kick them up
from their wallow in the warm mud.
This is the case when the weather is
sultry and spring-feverish, developing
thus suddenly after a gradual modera-
ton of weeks, during which process the
struggling sunshine and drizzling rains
together have extracted the frost from
the ground and rendered boring good for
the birds the moment their slender legs
settle down. Their long journey, al
though they make frequent halts for
rest, from the south has wearied and
made them hungry, and they set to
work most voraciously on their arrival
and gormandize themselves on the larvae
and aIgle-worms, with which good feed
ing grounds most abound. into an in
dolence and indifference that never fails
to result in the birds woe and hunter
profit. Their slow flip-flap up from the
grass and reeds makes shooting no trick
at all, and under such conditions enorm-
Gus bags are often made.-Cor. Com
mercial Gazette.