_Field marks._--The Wilson snipe should be easily recognized by its long bill, its erratic flight, its conspicuous stripes, and the rufous near the end of its tail. The harsh _scaipe_ note is diagnostic. It might be confused with the dowitcher, but the flight, notes, and usual haunts of the latter are different. I have often thought that the pectoral sandpiper resembles the snipe, as it rises from the grass, but it lacks the long bill, and is not so conspicuously striped on the back.
_Fall._--The fall migration of snipe is dependent on the weather, the first early frosts are apt to start them along; when the brilliant red leaves of the swamp maples add their touch of color to the marshes, and when the vegetation in the meadows begins to take on the rich hues of autumn, then we may look for the coming of the snipe. They are by no means confined to fresh-water marshes at this season. I have occasionally flushed a Wilson snipe on the salt marshes of Cape Cod, and have frequently found them on the dry grassy shores of islands in inland ponds.
They seem reluctant to return south in fall, even though they can have no appreciation of the constant persecution which awaits them during the six months' sojourn in their winter home. A few migrants appear in the northern part of the United States in early September, and, moving slowly southward, reach the southern part of the Gulf States shortly after the middle of October. Soon the main body of the birds follows, and all normally keep south of the line of frozen ground. Yet every winter some laggards remain much farther north, feeding about springs or streams. A few can usually be found on Cape Cod, Mass., while in the Rocky Mountains, near Sweetwater Lake, Colorado, the presence of warm springs has enabled snipe to remain throughout an entire winter, though the air temperature fell to 30° F. below zero.
During exceptionally wet autumns snipe occasionally resort in large numbers to the highly cultivated truck farms of Arlington and Belmont. An interesting instance of this happened in September, 1875, when a flight, larger than any that I have known to occur in the Cambridge region before or since, settled in some water-soaked fields covered with crops of corn, potatoes, cabbages, etc., on the Hittinger farm, Belmont. Learning of the presence of these birds about a week after their arrival, I visited the place early the next morning, but all save 10 or a dozen of them had departed, owing no doubt, to the fact that there had been a hard frost during the preceding night. The borings and other signs which they had left convinced me, however, that the statement made to me at the time by Mr. Jacob Hittinger, to the effect that he had started _four or five hundred snipe_ there only the day before, was probably not an exaggeration of the truth.