HUNTING BIRDS WITH CAMERA 



finger, mistaking it for a nice fat worm. It would 

 grasp a worm with the end of its long bill, using the 

 tip of the upper mandible independently of the rest of 

 the bill, like a thumb, and then gulp the worm down. 

 Most of the worms were put in a pan of moist earth, 

 through which they burrowed to the bottom. This 

 was at night, and in the morning we would find the 

 earth completely perforated with round holes where 

 the bird had bored for its game. It was seldom that 

 a single worm could long escape. 



Sometimes I would take the bird out for exercise and 

 picture-making, tying a thread to its leg to prevent it 

 from flying away. It would run about the lawn erecting 

 its pretty tail, which it spread out pompously after the 

 manner of a turkey cock. In like manner it would 

 drink or dabble along the margin of the river, and it 

 was a sight to watch it bore for worms in the soft mud 

 of the sink drain. Finally after a month's captivity, I 

 let it go, and the last I saw of it, it was trotting off under 

 the bushes on the river's brink. We all thought every- 

 thing of "Woodie," whose only fault, according to Ned, 

 was its enormous appetite, that fairly tired him out 

 digging worms to appease it. 



But he had a harder task yet in store. Time flew 

 along, like the birds, and it was April again. One day 

 a young man brought me an adult Woodcock, which he 

 had caught by the roadside. It had hurt its wing 

 against a telegraph wire and could no longer fly. It 

 could eat, however, and we soon found that it was no 



20 



