in length), chunky and cryptically patterned wader with bars, stripes and spots in shades of brown ranging from buffy-white to nearly black, with longitudinal stripes on the face and crown. It had a long bill, with a short neck, legs and tail. The outer tail feathers were narrow and stiffened, a modification to produce the distinctive roaring sound of the nocturnal "hakawai" aerial display. The species differed from others in the genus by details of plumage patterning and shading – in having a scalloped breast and flanks with rufous and cinnamon tinges. Behaviour One of the few people to make any kind of field study of the South Island snipe was naturalist Herbert Guthrie-Smith who reported on a 1923 visit to Big South Cape Island in his book Sorrows and Joys of a New Zealand Naturalist (1936): "Snipe begin to lay about the end of October and continue during the early November. Except that the legs are pale yellow they much resemble the common Snipe of the Old Country. The sexes vary but little, the male rather larger and of rather a richer plumage. The birds stand about two and a half inches high and measure along the body about six inches. Both male and female sit. "They trust to concealment, not to flight. Though ever so tame in our company they never ventured further than a few feet from covert, and the whole island is covert; watched through glasses at a distance the same distaste for the open was apparent. Even when suddenly put off the nest with a violent start – and thrice I hardened myself to this iniquity – the perturbed bird would merely emerge with full spread pinions from its isolated humpie of manuka. There were no signs however faint of ability or desire to fly. Often during incubation of the eggs the bill of the sitting bird will be deeply dived into the ground through the nest fabric; often, too, on its nest the bird will sit leaning for long periods on its bill as if for support. "Another nest placed also in the shelter of a low manuka cushion showed more care in construction; on granite grit and sand thickly littered with dracophyllum needles, it was piled a couple of inches high with moss, softest lichen and minutest lengths of frayed lissom manuka twiglets. Of this nest the eggs, also two in number and