some of the
descriptions I have had given me of these fine big Snipes, I have no
doubt it has occasionally been a Solitary Snipe. Mr. MacCulloch also
writes me word that the Solitary Snipe occasionally occurs.

It is included in Professor Ansted's list, and marked by him as
occurring in Guernsey and Sark. There is no specimen at present in the
Museum.

120. SNIPE. _Gallinago gallinaria_, Gmelin. French, "Becassine
ordinaire."--The Common Snipe is a regular and rather numerous autumnal
visitant to all the Islands, remaining through the winter and departing
again in the spring, some few remaining rather late into the summer. I
am very sceptical myself about the Snipe breeding in the Channel Islands
in the present day, although I was told one or two were seen about Mr.
De Putron's pond late this summer, and were supposed to be breeding
there; however, I could see nothing of them when there in June and July,
although, as I have said before, Mr. De Putron kindly allowed me to
search round his pond for either birds or eggs. Mr. MacCulloch, however,
thinks they still breed in Guernsey, as he writes to me to say, "I
believe that Snipes continue to breed here occasionally; I have heard of
them, and put them up myself in summer." If they do, I should think the
most likely places would be the wild gorse and heath-covered valleys
leading down to the Gouffre and Petit Bo Bay, as there is plenty of
water and soft feeding places in both; I have never seen one there,
however, though I have several times walked both those valleys and the
intervening land during the breeding-season, and I should think all
these places were much too much overrun with picnic parties and
excursionists to allow of Snipes breeding there now. Should the Snipe,
however, still breed in the Island, it would be as well to give it a
place in the Guernsey Bird Act, as it is much more worthy of protection
during the breeding-season than many of the birds there mentioned.
Sometimes in the autumn I have seen and shot Snipe in the most unlikely
places when scrambling along between huge granite boulders lying on a
surface of hard granite rock, where it would be perfectly impossible for
a Snipe to pick up a living; indeed with his sensitive bill I do not
believe a Snipe, if he found anything eatable, could pick it off the
hard ground. Probably the Snipes I have found in these unlikely places
were not there by choice, but because driven from their more favourite
places