356 With Rod and Gun 171 Nezu England 



which this species was almost a stranger are now well supplied, and in 

 every section of the State may be seen the great increase of the bird, and 

 in many localities it is now abundant. 



Among our migratory game birds none are better known than the 

 American woodcock. It is a common summer resident in almost every 

 portion of the State, arriving within our borders in early spring, and 

 remaining with us until the freezing weather of autumn drives it away. 



The sport derived from woodcock shooting is highly prized, and a few 

 brace of " flight birds " make a bag in which every sportsman takes pleas- 

 ure and pride ; for it is not every eye that is quick enough, and every aim 

 that is sufficiently accurate to bring down this long-billed, brown-feathered 

 "whistler." 



The following is an extract from a most admirable article on the wood- 

 cock, published in LippincoW s Magazine, October, 1868. 



" Woodcock shooting is pretty much the same kind of sport in all 

 countries, with very slight variations. The woodcock himself is the rarest 

 of game birds, and affords the genuine hunter a fine satisfaction, such as 

 he does not realize from the pursuit and bagging of any other sort of game. 

 He is the jewel of the field ; and the right man will travel a hundred miles 

 to the ground where he makes his habitat for the nonce, and think nothing 

 of a twenty-mile walk during the day when he is after this valued quarry. 

 Mostly other birds are comparatively easy to find, and not over- difficult to 

 kill ; but one must be something of a naturalist, and tolerably well skilled 

 in woodcraft to boot, before he can hunt the woodcock with success. It is 

 necessary to know when he will arrive at a given locality, and what are his 

 haunts, habits, and ways of life in general, and to be especially familiar 

 with the peculiarities of his flight. 



" A plaguy, shrewd and most artful dodger is the woodcock, with a 

 mathematical brain in his clodhopper-looking head, and as full of schemes 

 as a spider. But varied as are his motions, so that one can never tell what 

 will be his line of flight at any given time, nor his manner of flight, — 

 whether it shall be swift or slow, tangled or straight, — yet he obeys a regu- 

 lar series of laws, and never, or rarely, flies at random. He must, from 

 what we have already seen, possess an intuitive perception of space, and 

 the ins and outs of place. The sportsman never catches him in a network 

 of tree-top branches. He is too deep for that, the old woodsman ! and 

 shames our human woodcraft by his knowledge of woodland geography, 

 although how he acquires this knowledge must forever remain among the 

 many things that are hidden. 



" No game bird presents so mixed and heterogeneous a character as 

 the woodcock. He is swift and slow by turns ; easily put up and very hard 

 to stir ; truthful, and a most gay deceiver. He will lie so close at times 



