256 SHORE BIRDS 



kind, such as standing corn, during the day, the wood- 

 cock at dusk will fly out to any ground where food 

 is abundant. I have known them to drop into gar- 

 dens quite near the house, and they often fly to feed- 

 ing grounds quite distant from the cover. I have 

 had them fly quite close to my head when sitting in 

 the front yard, and they have often been seen flying 

 through the streets of a village, and once down Broad- 

 way, New York. I had one brought to me for iden- 

 tification which was taken in a business street in 

 Cincinnati, and knew of one being captured in a pas- 

 senger depot. Many are killed by striking telegraph 

 wires or fall victims to prowling cats. The woodcock 

 remain until the ground freezes, when they at once 

 disappear, going south. There the heavy cane-brakes 

 are a safe refuge, and it is fortunately so, since the 

 woodcock is one of the birds which seem destined to 

 become extinct at an early date. 



The woodcock is found from the Gulf to Canada 

 and west to Nebraska and Kansas. They were for- 

 merly very abundant in certain counties in New York, 

 and Forester mentions killing with a friend one hun- 

 dred and twenty-five birds in one day, and seventy 

 the day following before noon. This was in July and 

 it was intensely hot. The ground, he says, became so 

 foiled by the running of the innumerable birds, that 

 although they had excellent retrievers they lost be- 

 yond doubt forty or fifty birds, and at four in the after- 

 noon of the second day they were entirely out of am- 

 munition. 



Woodcock are abundant in Louisiana during the 

 months of December and January, and they were for- 



