Common snipe (scientific name Gallinago gallinago) breeds in Himalayas and found quite abundantly in Indo-Gangetic plain during winter, rare in south 
n early morning or late evening too, very sluggish during noon. It feeds on the seeds of marsh plants and small molluscs, but a great portion of the food consists of minute worms and larvae obtained by boring in soft mud, the long beak is uniquely adapted for this and are furnished with sensitive nerves at the end and muscles which allow the terminal half to open when the base is closed.The word 'sniper' originates from this bird, since it fly zigzag hunters had problem and those who could shoot down these birds were referred to as snipers.
A man named John Clare
Let me admit this I haven’t really heard about John Clare (1793-1864) before he is a spectacular discovery (thank the inte
rnet). These days I do spent substantial time on the net, I realize it can really give some nasty headache but the positive side is what excites. Doing bit of research on Clare was worth the effort he didn’t disappoint, the man really was one of the greatest. Son of farm laborer Clare was attached to nature and his poems reflect that connection, and alienation caused by disruptive changes that destroys these. Destruction caused by industrial revolution and agricultural revolution to the countryside deeply distressed him. Clare’s observations are always grounded in natural history, knowledge gained from wandering the fields, forests, and around the small farming village (in
In Hilly-Wood
How sweet to be thus nestling deep in boughs,
Upon an ashen stoven pillowing me;
Faintly are heard the ploughmen at their ploughs,
But not an eye can find its way to see.
The sunbeams scarce molest me with a smile,
So thickly the leafy armies gather round;
And where they do, the breeze blows cool the while,
Their leafy shadows dancing on the ground.
Full many a flower, too, wishing to be seen,
Perks up its head the hiding grass between,--
In mid-wood silence, thus, how sweet to be;
Where all the noises, that on peace intrude,
Come from the chittering cricket, bird, and bee,
Whose songs have charms to sweeten solitude.
Grasshoppers
Grasshoppers go in many a thumming spring
And now to stalks of tasseled sow-grass cling,
That shakes and swees awhile, but still keeps straight;
While arching oxeye doubles with his weight.
Next on the cat-tail-grass with farther bound
He springs, that bends until they touch the ground.
The Thrush's Nest
Within a thick and spreading hawthorn bush,
That overhung a molehill large and round,
I heard from morn to morn a merry thrush
Sing hymns to sunrise, and I drank the sound
With joy; and, often an intruding guest,
I watched her secret toils from day to day--
How true she warped the moss, to form a nest,
And modelled it within with wood and clay;
And by and by, like heath-bells gilt with dew,
There lay her shining eggs, as bright as flowers,
Ink-spotted-over shells of greeny blue;
And there I witnessed in the sunny hours
A brood of nature's minstrels chirp and fly,
Glad as that sunshine and the laughing sky.
John Clare was seen as the “Peasant Poet” by big city armchair romanticist. In reality, his poetry was the only realistic poetry about rural life that was being written at the time, appreciation of which had to wait until the twentieth century. Clare himself had this to say of Keats: “His descriptions of scenery are often very fine but as it is the case with other inhabitants of great cities he often described nature as she appeared to his fancies and not as he would have described her had he witnessed the things he described.” In contrast to the magnificent music and movement of Keats, Clare’s poems were humble and direct. Compare these lines of Keats and Clare on birds:
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
(Keats)
How curious is the nest: no other bird
Uses such loose materials or weaves
Its dwelling in such spots—dead oaken leaves
Are placed without and velvet moss within
And little scraps of grass and, scant and spare,
What scarcely seem materials, down and hair.
(Clare)
Clare did find his fame (Milton was his earliest patron) and was celebrated for brief period but insanity followed and last few years of his life were spent in asylum (vivid description of these can be found in Gutenburg.org. This site also contains many of his poems), it need be added that poems written in this depressing condition of his were brighter and bear no signs of cruelties of life, in these last years of his life it seemed he had become calm “And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept: Untroubling and untroubled where I lie; The grass below--above the vaulted sky”. These incidentally were his last lines. I am ashamed of not knowing this magnificent man till now.
This from “Adieu”
I left the little birds
And sweet lowing of the herds,
And couldn't find out words,
Do you see,
To say to them good-bye,
Where the yellowcups do lie;
So heaving a deep sigh,
Took to sea....
His last poem “I am” is considered as one of the best
I Am
I AM: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am, and live with shadows tost
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And een the dearest--that I loved the best--
Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smiled or wept;
There to abide with my Creator, GOD,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below--above the vaulted sky.
