14 BULLETIN OF THE 
were six sets of four, two of three, another on the verge of hatching, and 
one destroyed by a forest fire. 
I visited pair number two on the 18th, and found her sitting on only 
three eggs. The nest was two inches above the ground and rested on 
several willow limbs that grew almost parallel with the earth. She stuck 
closer than a wood-tick, and had to be lifted off her eggs, which she 
succeeded in covering again before I had time to say “boo.” 
April 21, between tree trunks, amidst a cluster of sumach, a Wood- 
cock’s bill projected beyond a little limb just enough to betray her presence. 
She was a nervous sitter and flushed before I could reach her. The last egg 
had just been laid, and what a set! One would have thought they had been 

Woodcock ‘Philophela minor’ on Nest 
FROM PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBERT HEGNER 
exposed to the weather for a year, and the shells turned a chocolate brown 
by the decayed leaves, after which the sumach berries had stained the larger 
halves of the eggs with crimson. The latter color mingled with a shade of 
violet that seemed to come from the blue Howers growing about the place. 
Like all other eggs of this species I have colleted, these turned paler 
after blowing, but are still orrespondingly darker than any other set I have. 
May 1 was a delightful day, and migration had reached its zenith, yet 
the passing of the Woodcock season meant the termination of a fascinating 
epoch; all subsequent “finds” are tame. Such were my thoughts as I wan- 
dered reluctantly among some brier patches, when a diminutive cotton-tail 
attracted my attention. He was a mascot, and his presence foretold the 
