THE, WOODCOCK. 47 



yoang are able to take care of themselves by this time, 

 and do not need the parents' solicitous attention, and 

 whether found alone by some secluded spring, deep in 

 the recesses of the hills, or in numbers in some back- 

 woods swamp, it is simply another phase of that great 

 question which agitates so many minds — that of supply 

 and demand. 



There may be a few birds willing to eke out an exist- 

 ence in the wettest portions of their old haunts, others 

 who choose the corn-fields, if they be moist enough, and 

 still others who know of springs among the mountains, 

 which early in the season reached the lowlands, moist- 

 ening the loam, but now lose their waters in more imme- 

 diate surroundings. 



Among the hills there are swamps rarely visited by 

 man, which, flooded in the earlier summer, now expose 

 their soil, furnishing tine feeding-grounds for woodcock. 

 In such places I have found woodcock in fair numbers 

 during the period of their moult, and I know of a pond 

 nestling in the depression of a high ridge of pasture-land, 

 forty rods away from the nearest grove of birches, pines, 

 and maples, where, in the spring, the dusky-duck stops 

 to rest and feed, that in August, when the hot sun has 

 absorbed its waters, shows countless woodcock borings, 

 while in the covers near, the moulting birds may be 

 flushed. After a week of sunshine, the soil becomes 

 parched, and that place knows them no more until 

 another season shall have run its course. 



Even now, though one know where to find them, there 

 is no more real ijleasure in their pursuit than in July, for 

 the chill of autumn is not yet in the air, nor are the 

 birds plump of body, or smooth and glossy of feather; 

 but when the heat of summer days and nights is on the 

 wane, and the forest is changing its robe of green to one 

 of many colors; when the crops have all been garnered, 



