American Woodcock. 215 
even been observed to seize between her two feet a young- 
ling and fly with it avay—a behavior whose purpose seemed 
to be the diversion of the enemy from the rest of the brood, 
thus giving them a chance to flee from impending peril to 
places of security in the surrounding verdure. After all 
danger has disappeared, she summons them together again 
by a familiar call, and doubtless relates to them the story of 
her adventures and the dangers from which they were saved. 
Worms, animalcula, ants and other soft-bodied insects, which 
the parents assist them in procuring from the soft earth, and 
from beneath the grass and dead leaves that abound in the 
places they frequent, constitute their food. Later on they 
are able to obtain their subsistence, with all the address of 
older birds, by thrusting their bills into the soil and in such 
other places as would be likely to contain the objects desired. 
Their tongues, covered with a viscid saliva, adhere to the 
food, and when drawn into the mouth carry it with them 
without danger of being lost. All who have made these 
birds a study have often discerned holes made in the soft 
mud by their bills. The presence of these “borings,” as 
they are called, is always an indication that game is not far 
distant, which a careful exploration of the locality soon 
verifies. The young, when matured, continue to occupy the 
same haunts with their parents, and, unless brought to an 
untimely death by the merciless gun of the hunter, repair 
to the warm, sunny, smiling South with the return of frost. 
In the Middle States—and the same is doubtless true of 
other sections of our great country—there is never more 
than a single brood raised, although the early breeding of 
the species would certainly afford time for a second hatching 
before the close of the season. Less pyriform are the eggs 
of the Woodcock than waders’ mostly are, being, in some 
instances, almost ovoidal. Their ground-color varies from a 
light clay to one of buffy-brown, and the markings occur in 
the form of fine spots and blotches of chocolate-brown, inter- 
spersed with others of obscure lilac, more or less thickly 
