No. 43.J EIRD NAMES. 



153 



calities, is oftener met with in print (the expression " cocking " 

 meaning woodcock-shooting sometimes, as well as rooster-fight- 

 ing). I only remember hearing the name " cock " popularly ap- 

 plied to the species in hand at Detroit ; the gunners and market- 

 men there use it quite commonly. 



At Pocomoke City (Worcester Co.), Md., and Eastville 

 (Northampton Co.), Va., NIGHT PARTRIDGE ; in the first-named 

 locality, however, it is more commonly termed the HOOKUM- 

 PAKE ; the latter name being imitative of its notes, or those 

 notes uttered immediately after its well-known spiral flight, the 

 imitation being more intelligible if written as follows: hookum, 

 - hookum, - p-a-k-e. 



To the darkies about Matthews Court House, Va., MOUN- 

 TAIN PARTRIDGE, and though we commonly associate wood- 

 cock with bogs and low-lying land, we must not forget the good 

 shooting we have sometimes had higher up, nor the fact that 

 many of these birds retire for a time to the hill-tops each year. 

 In this connection the following from Mr. George B. Bennett's 

 Birds of Western North Carolina is interesting (Auk, July, 

 1887). He writes : " I saw a pair of these birds on the summit 

 of Roan in a clump of balsams; the overflow from numerous 

 springs which had their sources at this spot formed an open 

 adjoining marsh of several acres ; altitude fully six thousand 

 feet. One or two pairs have been known to breed here every 

 year." 



Dr. G. B. Grinnell, in Century Company's Sport with Rod 

 and Gun, tells us that the woodcock is known to some in the 

 seaboard counties of Virginia as Night Partridge (a name al- 

 ready recorded), and also as PEWEE, and in portions of North 

 Carolina as the NIGHT PECK. 



In an article on woodcock in Minot's Land and Game Birds of 

 New England, 1877, the writer says : " Every sportsman is famil- 

 iar with those very small, wiry, compactly feathered, weather- 

 tanned birds who appear in October, and who are called, per- 

 haps locally, ' Labrador Twisters.' " The birds referred to are 

 probably those that when once disturbed and not immediately 

 brought to bag, whirl away with surprising velocity upon a 



