AVERY BIRD COLLECTION 31 
part of Hale County, with a dog trained to hunt them, 
the shooter might bag half a dozen of these interesting 
birds in a day. There are many more of them always 
than one would suppose, as they escape notice by their 
retired habits. The almost impenetrable briar patches 
and sloughs, where they lie concealed till twilight, save 
many of them from the bird bag. At that hour of the 
day the whistle of their wings may be heard as they pass 
swiftly by to their feeding grounds in tne open fields. 
They are mute till the nesting season, which begins here 
early in February. Then they are quite a noisy bird. 
The male makes his whereabouts known at that time by 
ascending on sounding pinions, just before night, and, 
suspended several hundred feet above some open land, 
cotton or corn field, now bare, he plays fantastic tunes 
before high Heaven. The observer might mistake these 
tunes, which the woodcock plays with his wings, for 
songs; but he cannot produce a musical sound except with 
his wings, which are the Aeolian-harp, and the primaries 
or pinions are the strings of that harp, whose vibrations 
are very similar to the sounds produced by running the 
fingers over the strings of a guitar. 
“When this aerial performance, which lasts for several 
minutes, is ended, he falls headlong to the ground, and 
so rapidly that he is generally secure from any untimely 
shot that might be intended for him. 
“Now begins his call to his dusky partner. There is no 
music in that ‘spake’ followed by a dissyllable so low and 
whispered that it can be heard only at a few feet distant, 
‘gooduck!’ All is silent; then comes another ‘spake! goo- 
duck!’ This is certainly not musical; but it answers the 
purpose of a song and serves to attract the female. 
“‘Woodcocks were ‘soaring’ and ‘spaking’ here on the 
sixth of last February—‘spaking,’ as the Irishman would 
say, to their fair companions. Is there a shooter—lI will 
not say a sportsman—who kills woodeocks here in the 
South in,February? If there is, he is not a sportsman, 
but an assassin.” (1890a). 
In Dr. Avery’s original note books, under date of Feb. 
23, 1893, is the following entry: 
