THE AMERICAN WOODCOCK. 17 



suaded, are much greater than is usually supposed. As it feeds hy night, it 

 is rarely met with by day, unless by a sportsman or gunner, who may be 

 engaged in pursuing it for pleasure or profit. It is, however, killed in 

 almost incredible numbers, from the beginning of July until late in winter, 

 in different parts of the Union, and our markets are amply supplied with it 

 during its season. You may at times see gunners returning from their sports 

 with a load of Woodcocks, composed of several dozens; nay, adepts in the 

 sport have been known to kill upwards of a hundred in the course of a day, 

 being assisted by relays of dogs, and perhaps a change of guns. In Lower 

 Louisiana, they are slaughtered under night by men carrying lighted torches, 

 which so surprise the poor things that they stand gazing on the light until 

 knocked dead with a pole or cane. This, however, takes place only on the 

 sugar and cotton plantations. 



At the time when the Woodcocks are travelling from the south towards 

 all parts of the United States, on their way to their breeding places, these 

 birds, although they migrate singly, follow each other with such rapidity, 

 that they might be said to arrive in flocks, the one coming directly in the 

 wake of the other. This is particularly observable by a person standing on 

 the eastern banks of the Mississippi or the Ohio, in the evening dusk, from 

 the middle of March to that of April, when almost every instant there 

 whizzes past him a Woodcock, with a velocity equalling that of our swiftest 

 birds. See them flying across and low over the broad stream; the sound 

 produced by the action of their wings reaches your ear as they approach, 

 and gradually dies away after they have passed and again entered the woods. 

 While travelling with my family, in the month of October, through New 

 Brunswick and the northern part of the State of Maine, I saw the Wood- 

 cocks returning southward in equal numbers late in the evenings, and in the 

 same continuous manner, within a few yards or even feet of the ground, on 

 the roads or through the woods. 



This species finds itself accommodated in the warmer parts of the United 

 States, as well as in high northern latitudes, during the breeding season: it 

 is well known to reproduce in the neighbourhood of Savannah in Georgia, 

 and near Charleston in South Carolina. My friend John Bachman has 

 known thirty young ones, not yet fully fledged, to have been killed in the 

 vicinity of the latter place in one day. I have never found its nest in 

 Louisiana, but I have frequently fallen in with it in the States from Missis- 

 sippi to Kentucky, in which latter country it breeds abundantly. In the 

 Middle Districts, the Woodcock begins to pair in the end of March; in the 

 southern a month earlier. At this season, its curious spiral gyrations, while 

 ascending or descending along a space of fifty or more yards of height, in 

 the manner described in the article on the Snipe, when it utters a note dif- 



Vol. VI. 3 



