698 KEPOKT OF STATE GEOLOGIST. 



Farther south, where they breed in very limited numbers, and where 

 the conditions they desire are not often found, it is only rarely they 

 are seen, and then during the later migrations or the mating season. 

 In the vicinity of Brookville I have generally found them between 

 April 1 and 15. Upon their arrival they are found in thickets along 

 the shores of lakes, rivers and small streams, where the ground is wet 

 and soft, so it ca'n be easily probed with the long, sensitive bills, for 

 their favorite food, earthworms. Sometimes, however, they are found 

 far from such situations during the spring migrations. April 1, 1897, 

 I found two in rather open woods, on the top of a dry ridge, over 

 three hundred feet above the river valley, near Brookville. They are 

 nocturnal not only in their migrations, but generally in all their 

 movements. The early migrants begin mating soon after arrival; the 

 later ones frequently come paired. One of the notable characteristics 

 of the mating time is the series of aerial evolutions and the nocturnal 

 song of the male. 



Mr. Jesse Earlle and Mr. Alexander Black observed these repeated 

 several times on two successive evenings, at Greencastle, March 10 and 

 11, 1892. The first evening they could not determine the bird, but the 

 next night they secured the performer, which proved to be a- male 

 Woodcock. Mr. Eugene P. Bicknell, in the Auk, Vol. II, July, 1885, 

 .pp. 261, 262, gives an excellent account of this feature of the mating 

 habits, which he observed April 19, 1884: "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 con- 

 siderable in pitch, sometimes expanding to sweep far out over the 

 neighboring fields, where a single evolution would cany the bird up- 

 ward almost to the extremity of its flight, which was sometimes di- 

 rectly 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 quavering sound. 

 Each pulsation was shorter and faster than the last, and took the 

 tremolo to a higher pitch, sounding like a throbbing whirr of fine 

 machinery or suggesting in movement the accelerating, rhythmic 

 sound of a railway car gradually gaining full speed after a stop. At 

 last, when it seemed as if greater rapidity of utterance was not possible, 

 the vertex of the flight would be reached, and descending with in- 

 creasing swiftness, the bird would break forth into an irregular chip- 

 pering, almost a warble, the notes sounding louder and more liquid as 

 it neared the earth. Suddenly there would be silence, and a small, 

 dark object would dart past through the dusk, down amid the shrub- 



