In tlie bare, damp spots among tlie alders and 

 along the edge of tlie corn-field, soon after 

 Woodcock arrived, I found bis borings— groups 

 of a dozen or more holes where, in hunting 

 worms, he had plunged his bill into the earth up 

 to his eyes (up to the place where his eyes 

 would normally have been). I had always won- 

 dered how the bird, when he felt a worm, could 

 open his bill with it forced to the hilt in stiff, solid 

 earth, for surely he does not thrust it down 

 already open. Year after year I kept on won- 

 dering instead of investigating, until one day a 

 man showed me that there was a curious flexible 

 tip to the upper mandible which the bird could 

 move independently of the rest of the beak, and 

 thus grasp the luckless worm, though deep in 

 the mud. 



This is distinction enough for one beak, and 

 we ought not to expect of it a song. Nor do 

 we. One cannot think of a hooked beak or a 

 flat beak or a long beak emitting music. It is 

 not for his singing that I should miss Woodcock 

 in the swale, but for his dancing. l!fo festival 

 fires among the tepees, no barbecue among the 

 cabins, ever saw wilder, more frenzied dancing 

 [219] 



