WOODCOCK SHOOTING 



gives. With the woodcock the motion is 

 vaguely, impalpably swift. You see a golden- 

 brown streak in the atmosphere for the 

 briefest second. You see the long bill and 

 hear the creaking whistle. But how sudden- 

 ly that phantom flight ceases; how short 

 a space the picture hangs in the summer 

 air! 



The woodcock bores for his food like the 

 jack-snipe, and his appetite is prodigious. He 

 will eat his own weight in angle-worms in a 

 very brief time. He loves the ground about 

 the spring-holes by a river-bank, and the 

 brushy, soft spots around creeks where they 

 empty into the rivers. He haunts shaded 

 thickets where the ground is moist and easily 

 penetrated by his long bill. He feeds at 

 night, and the places he frequents are easily 

 distinguished by his borings, which give the 

 ground a pepper-box appearance where he 

 has stalked about investigating the yielding 

 soil. When alarmed, he is away like a 

 shadow into thicket or adjacent cover. He 

 is not a bird of extended flight, but when 

 flushed darts into some convenient hiding- 

 place near at hand rather than fly a consider- 

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