100 KRIDER'S SPORTING ANECDOTES. 



obliged to go to the city, our stay was prolonged 

 for a fortnight, and upon our return, we found 

 the bird had died from neglect, or, as the farmer's 

 boys in whose care it was left, pertinaciously 

 asserted, from the effects of a surfeit. 



Woodcock often return for successive seasons 

 to the same spots to rear their young. This fact 

 was long ago satisfactorily proved in England, 

 and in Pennsylvania nests have been found for 

 two springs in succession, beneath the same bush, 

 on a piece of slightly elevated ground sheltered 

 from the west winds by a woods. We have not the 

 least doubt of the identity of the inhabitant ; in 

 fact, this peculiarity is remarked in many other 

 migratory birds of a more familiar nature. Wil- 

 son, the father of American ornithology, whose 

 acuteness of observation was only equalled by his 

 regard for truth and his unobtrusive modesty, 

 repeatedly refers to it as not the least interesting 

 among the habits of the creatures he was called 

 upon describe. 



The woodcock has been known to exhibit, 

 under certain circumstances, curious symptoms 

 of anger, somewhat similar to the pompous strut- 

 tings of the turkey. On the twenty-fifth of Au- 

 gust Mr. Krider was shooting in the mountains 

 of Bedford county, Pennsylvania, birds being 



