l8S 5d Bicknell on the Singing of Birds. 26 I 



spring, seems to be the season when its cry is most frequent and 

 most regular from year to year. Usually, after a considerable 

 time of silence, it begins to quaver in July or in August, thence 

 continuing off and on until winter. But there is no great regu- 

 larity about this ; simply my notes through a series of years 

 cover all this period, and the bird is to be heard in one or more 

 of the autumn months every year. 



I am not without scattering records of having heard it in 

 winter ; but it is virtually a silent bird from December or earlier 

 until March or later. 



With some uniformity it is to he heard for a short time in late 

 March or early April ; but I have-not a record for late April, May, 

 and June. 



Philohela minor. Woodcock. 



Although the aerial manoeuvres of the Woodcock at dusk and 

 in the dark are, freely speaking, familiar to us all, in a stricter 

 sense there is still a prevailing ignorance in regard to them. 



My journal supplies the following, slightly adapted, under 

 date of April 19, 1SS4 : The birds would start up from amid the 

 shrubbery with a tremulous whirring sound of the wings, rising 

 with spiral course into the air. The spiral varied considerably 

 in pitch, sometimes expanding to sweep far out over a neighbor- 

 ing field, when a single revolution would carry the bird upward 

 almost to the extremity of its flight, which was sometimes directly 

 over the point of departure. The rapid trilling sound with which 

 it started off, as Woodcocks do, continued without interruption 

 during the ascent, but gradually became more rapid, and as the 

 bird neared its greatest height passed into pulsations of quaver- 

 ing sound. Each pulsation w r as shorter and faster than the last, 

 and took the tremolo to a higher pitch, sounding like a throbbing 

 whir of fine machinery, or suggesting in movement the acceler- 

 ating rhythmic sound of a railway-car gradually gaining full speed 

 after a stop. At last, when it seemed as if greater rapidity of ut- 

 terance was not possible, the vertex of the flight would be reached, 

 and, descending with increasing swiftness, the bird would break 

 forth into an irregular chippering — almost a warble — the notes 

 sounding louder and more liquid as it neared the earth. Suddenly 



