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Then there were the jacksnipe. Tired and happy we dined. Until retiring time, we lived again the sport of the day. When we sought our beds, sleep came quickly, and I do not think any of us turned over until it was time to get up. We had packed our belongings, taken on gasoline and breakfasted, and started homeward a little after 7 o'clock.
In the rye the quail would be calling, and, in the grass, the corncrake, and over them would be wheeling flocks of twittering linnets. Also, the jacksnipe would be uttering its croak, and the lark executing its roulades where it had become lost in the sunshine, and cranes sending forth their trumpet-like challenge as they deployed towards the zenith in triangle-shaped flocks.
They are an important element of the latter bird's diet, and no fewer than eight species of them have been found in its food. Wireworms and their adult forms, click beetles, are devoured by the northern phalarope, woodcock, jacksnipe, pectoral sandpiper, killdeer, and upland plover. The last three feed also on the southern corn leaf-beetle and the last two upon the grapevine colaspis.
"It's a good thing to be. Of course there's the fun of it the 'pats, the quail, the jacksnipe, the 'cock. But then there's the other part, too." They had come out on the sandhills over the town. Mr. Kincaid drew up Bucephalus and contemplated it as it lay below them, its roofs half hidden in the mauve and lilac of bared branches, its columns of smoke rising straight up in the frosty air.
We made the home run without incident. Spread out in one body our game made a most imposing appearance. Besides the 118 ducks there were 50 jacksnipe and 68 fine large wild pigeons. Such days make us regret that we are growing old. They rejuvenate us make us boys again. Boyhood Days in Early California
It is the same bird, Ortyx Virginiana: they call it partridge in the South rather smaller than ours at the North. In the swamp I found snipe, Scolopax Wilsonii: they call them here jacksnipe. Here is one of them: did you ever see a fatter bird?" "I should like to go and look them up to-morrow morning," said the captain. "How far away were they?" "About half a mile only, north-west.
If I told you once, I told you twenty times, that I had seen the bird on three distinct occasions in the meadow below Reel's mill; and you each time threw your jacksnipe theory in my face. To-day I marked him down in the bare ground outside Haveldon wood, then ran at full speed up to the jager, and offered him five shillings if he would come down and shoot the bird I showed him.
'Like a jacksnipe fetches his mate out o' the grass, she said. 'What did he say? 'Nought. 'Then how ? 'There's things harder than words; words be nought. 'Go on. 'It was like as if there was a secret atween us, and I'd got to find it out. Dunna look so fierce, Ed'ard! 'Did you find out? A tide of painful red surged over Hazel; she turned away.
Other shorebirds that eat leaf-beetles are the Wilson phalarope and dowitcher. Crayfishes, which are a pest in rice and corn fields in the South and which injure levees, are favorite food of the black-necked stilt, and several other shorebirds feed upon them, notably the jacksnipe, robin snipe, spotted sandpiper, upland plover, and killdeer.
Blackbirds of two or three kinds are found in the marshes, also killdeer, jacksnipe and the ever active and interesting spotted sandpipers. A few meadow-larks now and again are heard singing their exquisite song, reminding one of Browning's wise thrush which "sings each song twice over, lest you should think he cannot recapture that first fine careless rapture."
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