40 UPLAND SHOOTING. 



present their bills they are long ones, too for pay- 

 ment. 



It must not be understood that woodcock never feed 

 between the hours of dawn and sunset, for I have caught 

 them at their borings where a dark morass, studded with 

 pools, each bordered with deep, rich loam, furnished the 

 choicest food, and where the alders were so thick that 

 the sunlight could not reach the ground beneath, and 

 low upon the earth all was dark and still, save the hum 

 of insects and the purling of the brook. Again, one day 

 in early autumn, I came upon a woodcock in a meadow 

 corn-field. I watched him for some time probing the soft, 

 moist soil, until, either becoming weary in well-doing or 

 suspicious of my presence, he walked slowly away, with 

 bobbing head, from his last feast, for I then flushed and 

 shot him. And again, one dark, rainy morning in July, 

 about 8 o'clock, as I was driving along a road which 

 had recently been repaired from the rich soil of a neigh- 

 boring alder-flat, a woodcock flushed in front of me, and 

 then another, and another, and another. As soon as 

 possible I stopped my horse, and again saw them, only a 

 few rods distant, busily feeding; punch, push, probe, 

 pull, and worm after worm, brought toward the surface 

 by the warm rain, was drawn from the soft road, not by 

 suction, but by the good muscular efforts of those long 

 bills. Driving on, they flushed again; but loath to leave 

 such a delicious breakfast, they would not take to the 

 covers, and stopping, feeding, flushing, for more than 

 fifty rods, that quartette of woodcock kept the highway 

 until there were open fields upon either side of them, 

 when, with a curve in their flight, they turned back and 

 disappeared in the cover. 



Curious birds are they, forever presenting to him who 

 studies their modes of life new phases of character. 

 Their complete history has never yet been written. 



