68 BULLETIN 142, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



eggs showing the four extremes measure 41 by 30 and 35 by 27.5 

 millimeters. 



Young. — The period of incubation is 20 or 21 days. Both sexes 

 assist in this and in the care of the young. An incubating woodcock 

 is notorious as a close sitter and can not usually be flushed from the 

 nest unless nearly trodden upon; often it can be touched or even 

 lifted from the eggs. The young are rather feeble when first hatched 

 and are brooded by the parent bird much of the time for the first 

 day or two. If flushed from her brood of young the female flutters 

 away for a short distance as if hardly able to fly, with dangling legs 

 and tail depressed and spread. If the young are strong enough to 

 walk, she calls to them making a clucking sound, to which they 

 respond with a faint peeping sound, as they run toward her ; having 

 gathered them under her wings, she covers them again trusting to 

 her concealing coloration. If the young are too young and feeble 

 to run, she may return when she thinks it safe, and carry them off 

 between her legs, one at a time. Several reliable and accurate ob- 

 servers have testified to seeing this done; some who have not seen it 

 have doubted it. The following account by Edwyn Sandys (1904) 

 seems convincing: 



The nest in question was on a bit of level ground amid tall trees. The sole 

 suggestion of cover was a lot of flattened leaves which lay as the snow had 

 left them. Perhaps 10 yards away was an old rail fence about waisthigh, and 

 on the farther side of it was a clump of tall saplings. A man coming out of 

 the wood told me he had just flushed a woodcock and had seen her brood, 

 recently hatched and pointed out where they were. I went in to investigate, 

 and located one young bird crouched on the leaves. It ran a few steps and 

 again crouched, evidently not yet strong enough for any sustained effort. I 

 went off, and hid behind a stump, to await developments. From this shelter 

 the young bird was visible and it made no attempt to move. Presently the 

 old one came fluttering back, alighted near the youngster, and walked to it. 

 In a few moments she rose and flew low and heavily, merely clearing the fence, 

 and dropping perhaps 10 yards within the thicket. Her legs appeared to be 

 half bent, and so far as I could determine the youngster was held between 

 them. Something about her appearance reminded me of a thing often seen — 

 a shrike carrying off a small bird. I carefully marked her down, then glanced 

 toward where the youngster had been. It was no longer there ; and a few 

 moments later it, or its mate, was found exactly where the mother had gone 

 down. She flushed and made off in tbe usual summer flight. 



William H. Fisher writes to me : 



On May 16, 1903, I flushed an old bird at upper end of the Eagle Woods. 

 She left tbree young on the ground, they remaining very quiet, cuddled in the 

 dead leaves. In a few minutes she returned and alighted by them took one 

 between her legs, holding it tight up to her belly, and flew off into a thicket. 

 I sat and watched the other two young for about 15 minutes, hoping and ex- 

 pecting the mother bird would return, but, she not doing so, I got tired and 

 left. As the usual set of eggs is four, I wonder if the old bird carried off one 

 when she first flushed. 



