The American Woodcock 305 



also will, if they be stanch workers, get home 

 at night sweat to the crown and mud to the 

 fork, and, possibly, bearing with them a brace 

 or so of cock, a fair sample of headache, and a 

 temper of from one-quarter to three-eighths of an 

 inch long. 



Summer cock-shooting is a very weak imita- 

 tion of genuine sport. The birds then are in 

 poor condition — moulting flutterers, merely able 

 to weave a batlike flight through a tangle of 

 sun-parched foliage. Very often, too, the man 

 who is early afield, to avoid the full heat of 

 the day, kills a few brace before mid-morning 

 only to have them spoil on his hands before 

 he can get them home. But in the autumn 

 it is very different. Then the game forsakes 

 his beloved mud and takes to the uplands, to 

 the big fields of standing corn and the dry 

 thickets, and there he may be found in all his 

 glory, fat, strong, beautiful — in fine, what he 

 should be when a sportsman draws trigger on 

 him. 



The bird of mystery, the big-eyed king of the 

 copse, must be followed from South to North and 

 back again before his seemingly baffling move- 

 ments are revealed in their real simplicity. In 

 the first place, he comes North very early, fre- 

 quently before the snow has entirely gone. I 

 have found birds (in- Ontario) in southerly ex- 



