WOODCOCK. 421 



ety of eccentric motions, and from time to time darting suddenly 

 down with great velocity. The eggs are laid early in April, 

 sometimes on a warm knoll, sometimes on a high, bare hillside. 

 After incubation has begun, it is extremely difficult to find 

 the birds ; a few days later the sportsman may easily find 

 three or four broods of young with one or both parents, w^here 

 he may before have hunted by inches without flushing a bird. 

 Should he, however, patiently search with his dog the dry 

 grounds, he may find them, perhaj)s ten yards, perhaps half 

 a mile, from the wet swale which he knows to be their favo- 

 rite feeding-ground. The same is the case in August ; also 

 in winter (in districts of the South, where in many localities 

 which the writer has visited the birds may be found in the 

 ratio of ten to a township). In no part of the country are 

 there Woodcock enough to occupy the wdiole of it ; they may 

 resort to any one of the many thousand acres outside of 

 the particular spot to which at particular times they 

 resort. While the young are feeble on the wing and 

 their parents are with them, twelve birds may be found 

 in summer in a swale of two acres, but later they 

 may be dispersed over many hundred times that space. Their 

 '' borings " (small, clean-cut holes made in soft earth by 

 their bills) may still, however, be seen in the same swale; 

 moreover, by j)atient watching at evening, their shadowy 

 forms may be detected, as they pass to the swamp, or cross 

 the roadway, and, by patient search, the same twelve birds 

 may be picked up one by one in odd places. This fact the 

 author has verified by experience, when the temporary laws 

 forbade the killing of the birds before August fifteenth. 

 Will any one who cannot gainsay these facts still uphold the 

 absurd old theory that Woodcock migrate in summer ? Since 

 this so-called disappearance is a notorious fact from Canada 

 to the far South and West, we venture to ask to what place 

 the birds migrate. To this there is no answer. 



The period of incubation is supposed to be sixteen days, 

 but it may be longer. As soon as the young are hatched, it 

 becomes convenient and necessary that the whole family 

 should be in the immediate vicinity of a feeding-ground, and 



