AMERICAN WOODCOCK 125 
perience, who, when I had told him that I had 
seen a woodcock perched in a tree, listened with 
a politely incredulous smile, saying nothing, but 
looking—‘‘ Well, I may want to tell you a ‘bus- 
ter’ to match that when I have the time to manu- 
facture it.’’ He is now convinced, for he has 
seen with his own eyes. I have in mind an- 
other case where a man killed one that was 
perching in an apple tree at dusk—shot him 
with a club, too—but there! I see that my 
reputation for truth-telling is entirely gone! 
Yet why should not a Woodcock alight in a 
tree? He passes his entire life in the thickest 
tangle of the woods, and what is there strange 
in his settling on a limb if he likes? ‘‘But,”’ 
said one scoffer, ‘‘the Woodcock’s foot is not 
in the least fitted for the perching habit; he 
could never keep on a limb.’’ Certainly he is 
as well fitted for it as a woodduck, a hooded 
merganser, a whistler, a goose, or an upland 
plover, and there seems to be no difficulty for 
the same people to believe that the snipe, his 
first cousin and much more a bird of the open 
country, will fly up into a tree when alarmed 
near its nest. The habit in the case of the 
“Woodcock also seems to be more common dur- 
