132 FIELD BIIOOTING. 



neighborhood of little streams which trickle through 

 brush and among timber. The most I ever killed 

 in a day was fifteen couple. I have heard men 

 boast of having killed fifty couple in a day; but 

 if they did it, the birds must have been vastly 

 more abundant than I ever saw them anywhere. 

 The woodcock is easily killed when you can get 

 an open shot ; but that is rather seldom, except 

 at the last of the season and in such small patches 

 cf short brush as I mentioned above. A wood- 

 cock, when winged, does not run off" as quail do. 

 The birds have tvv sorts of flight. In one it 

 goes laboring and slow, just over the tops of the 

 branches, to which height it has risen almost per- 

 pendicularly, and then it soon flops down again. 

 Its other mode of flight is swiftly away among 

 the stems of the trees, darting here and there 

 until it has found its opening, along which it goes 

 like a bullet. 1 was told in the South that it is 

 very plentiful along the edges of the bayous in 

 the winter there. The negroes go out by night 

 in boats with torches, and, paddling along, the 

 woodcock on the muddy margin are knocked down 

 with sticks. I heard of this, but never saw it, and 

 merely tell the tale as it was told to me. 



