476 AMERICAN WOODCOCK. 



these birds, although they migrate singly, follow each other with such 

 rapidity, that they might be said to arrive in flocks, the one coming di- 

 rectly in the wake of the other. This is particularly observable by a 

 person standing on the eastern banks of the Mississippi or the Ohio, in 

 the evening dusk, from the middle of March to that of April, when al- 

 most every instant there whizzes past him a Woodcock, with a velocity 

 equalling that of our swiftest birds. See them flying across and low over 

 the broad stream ; the sound produced by the action of their wings 

 reaches your ear as they approach, and gradually dies away after they 

 have passed and again entered the woods. While travelling with ray 

 family, in the month of October, through New Brunswick and the 

 northern part of the State of Maine, I saw the Woodcocks returning 

 southward in equal numbers late in the evenings, and in the same con- 

 tinuous manner, within a few yards or even feet of the ground, on the 

 roads or through the woods. 



This species finds itself accommodated in the warmer parts of the 

 United States, as well as in high northern latitudes, during the breeding 

 season : it is well known to reproduce in the neighbourhood of Savannah 

 in Georgia, and near Charleston in South Carolina. My friend John 

 Bachman has known thirty young ones, not yet fully fledged, to have 

 been killed in the vicinity of the latter place in one day. I have never 

 found its nest in Louisiana, but I have frequently fallen in with it in the 

 States from Mississippi to Kentucky, in which latter country it breeds 

 abundantly. In the Middle Districts, the Woodcock begins to pair in 

 the end of March ; in the southern a month earlier. At this season, 

 its curious spiral gyrations, while ascending or descending along a space 

 of fifty or more yards of height, in the manner described in the article 

 of the Snipe, when it utters a note different from the cry of that bird, 

 and somewhat resembling the word kwauk, are performed every eve- 

 ning and morning for nearly a fortnight. While on the ground, at 

 this season as well as in autumn, the male not unfrequently repeats this 

 sound, as if he were calling to others in his neighbourhood, and on hear- 

 ing it answered, immediately flies to meet the other bird, which in the 

 same manner advances toward him. On observing the Woodcock while 

 in the act of emitting these notes, you would imagine he exerted himself 

 to the utmost to produce them, its head and bill being inclined towards 

 the ground, and a strong forward movement of the body taking place at 

 the moment the kwauk reaches your ear. This over, the bird jerks its 



