WOODCOCK, AMERICAN 



They keep secluded in the woods and thickets till the 

 approach of evening, when they sally forth .... in 

 quest of worms and other insects on which they feed. 

 . . . . They indicate their presence in all directions by 

 the marks of their boring bills. . . . The sensibility 

 possessed by the extremity of the bill is of such an exquisite 

 nature that they are enabled to collect their food by the 

 mere touch without using their eyes, which are set at 

 such a distance and elevation in the back part of the head 

 as to give the bird a remarkable aspect of stupidity. 



NuttalPs Ornithology. 26 



How many evenings have I tempted malaria germs 

 . . . . to watch the woodcock perform his strange sky 

 dance! He begins on the ground with a formal, periodic 



peent, peent It is repeated several times before 



he springs from the ground and on whistling wings sweeps 

 out on the first loop of a spiral which may take him three 

 hundred feet from the ground. Faster and faster he goes, 

 louder and shriller sounds his wing-song; then after a 

 moment's pause, with darting, headlong flight, he pitches 

 in zigzags to the earth, uttering as he falls a clear, twitter- 

 ing whistle. He generally returns to near the place from 

 which he arose, and the peent is at once resumed as a 

 preliminary to another round in the sky. 



CHAPMAN. Handbook of Birds. 21 



WOODPECKER, DOWNY 



The little downy woodpecker is everywhere. There is 

 not a tree too small for it to consider, and when trees 

 fail altogether, it will climb over an old grape arbor and 

 be happy in so artificial a surrounding. 



ABBOTT. Birds About Us. 27 



178 



