WOODCOCK. 95 
It rarely breeds on the Atlantic coast, but is some- 
times common on our marsh-bordered streams in the 
fall. 
SHORE BIRDS. (ORDER LIMICOLZ.) 
SNIPES AND SANDPIPERS. (FAMILY SCOLOPACID.2) 
Tue successful pursuit of shore birds on our coasts 
requires a special knowledge of their notes and habits. 
Thirty of the one hundred known species visit us annu- 
ally, but of this number only two or three nest, most of 
the others migrating in May to their breeding grounds in 
the far North. The return migration takes place during 
July, August, and September, but with some exceptions 
these birds are seen only by those who Sant them sys- 
tematically with decoys. 
Only these exceptions and our summer resident species 
will be mentioned here. Commonest among the latter 
* is the Woodcock, a bird so unlike other 
Philohela minor, Sdipe in his choice of haunts that he 
seems quite out of place in this family. 
Nor is he, strictly speaking, a summer resident, for there 
are only three months in the year when the Woodcock 
is not with us. He comes in March as soon as the frost- 
bound earth will permit him to probe for his diet of 
worms, and he remains until] some December freeze 
drives him southward. 
Low, wet woods, where skunk cabbage and hellebore 
thrive, or bush-grown, springy runs, are the Woodcock’s 
early haunts. In August, while molting, he often visits 
cornfields in the bottom lands, and in the fall wooded 
hillsides are his resorts. But, wherever he is, the Wood- 
cock leaves his mark in the form of “borings”—little holes 
which dot the earth in clusters, and show where the bird 
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