THE AMERICAN WOODCOCK. 191 
points to the pole, to the very wood and the very brake 
of the wood in which he was hatched, and commences 
the duties of nidification. , 
I am inclined to believe that the woodcock are already 
paired when they come on to the northward; if not, 
they do so without the slightest delay, for they unques- 
tionably begin to lay within a week or two after their 
arrival, sometimes even before the snow has melted from 
the upland. Sometimes they have been known to lay so 
early as February, but March and the beginning of 
April are their more general season. Their nest is very 
inartificially made of dry leaves and stalks of grass. 
The female lays from four to five eggs, about an inch 
and a half long, by an inch in diameter, of a dull clay 
color, marked with a few blotches of dark brown inter- 
spersed with splashes of faint purple. It is a little 
doubtful whether the woodcock does or does not rear a 
second brood of young, unless the first hatching is 
destroyed, as is very frequently the case, by spring 
floods, which are very fatal to them. In this case, they 
do unquestionably breed a second time, for I have 
myself found the young birds, skulking about like young 
mice in the long grass, unable to fly, and covered with 
short blackish down, the most uncouth and comical look- 
ing little wretches imaginable, during early July shoot- 
ing; but it is on the whole my opinion that, at least on 
early seasons, they generally raise two broods } and this, 
