412 



i Dec, Li, 1890. 



THE AMERICAN WOODCOCK. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



I have read with peculiar interest, and sometimes with 

 great surprise, the articles that have appeared in your 

 paper concerning the "ways of the woodcock,"' about 

 which such diversity of opinion exists. The details of the 

 many theories advanced, the various "facts and fancies" 

 need not be entered into here. Your readers must have 

 become already very familiar with the literature of the 

 subject — not to say weary of it. I have earnestly wished 

 for an opportunity, such as I have lately had, of more 

 thoroughly investigating the bird's manner of feeding, its 

 notes, etc. 



On Wednesday, Nov. 19, a live woodcock was brought 

 me by a friend. It had, I was told, been already "three 

 or four days" in confinement. It was apparently unhurt, 

 and a perfectly strong, healthy bird, and remained so 

 until the following Monday, when, with my full consent 

 and best wishes, it flew rapidly away. I kept it in a long 

 pine box with a wire netting in front, at a greenhouse 

 near by, where in a bright light I could easily watch its 

 movements. A piece of carpet, however, was thrown 

 over one end of the coop to afford the little fellow a shady 

 retreat. He came into my possession about 11 o'clock 

 in the morning, and from that hour until 11 A, M. Mon- 

 day, the day of his release, I devoted myself almost ex- 

 clusively to studying his ways. He ate, by actual 

 measurement, about a half-pint of earth worms during 

 each day (twenty-four hours); the worms being measured 

 without any dirt, of course; each one picked up by itself, 

 shaken clean, and dropped into the measure. A few 

 "white grubs" of different sizes were also supplied: he 

 ate the little ones but refused the larger. None of the 

 angle worms, however, seemed too large for him. 



The worms were kept at the brightly lighted end of the 

 coop in a box of earth which afforded a feeding surface 

 of a little over 12x6in., the earth having been flattened 

 down with the hand and sprinkled with water. He fed 

 at very irregular hours, and ate fully as much by day- 

 light as in the dark, and food was accessible to him at all 

 times. I say "him," believing that this bird was a male, 

 but I could not bring myself to determine the matter by 

 dissection— he was such a winning little creature. 



The intervals between his meals were perhaps from 

 half an hour to three hours, this very rough estimate 

 being founded upon the day and evening feeding. I did 

 not watch him so constantly during the evening as I did 

 in the daytime. I visited him, however, every evening 

 once or twice, sometimes making him a long call by the 

 light of a lantern. All that I know about the remainder 

 of the night and the early morning was gained by re- 

 measuring the worms and finding how many were gone. 



After eating all he wanted — froru four to seven worms, 

 let us say — he would sometimes retire to his shady corner, 

 at other times stand or squat exactly where the last worm 

 was swallowed, remaining motionless until moved again 

 by hunger. He took no exercise unless forced to, and 

 was often found with his big head turned backward and 

 his long bill beneath his wing. A dish of water was 

 always by his side, but I never saw him touch it. 



I will add to my estimate of the number of worms eaten 

 at a single meal, that there were certain occasions in 

 which he quite regularly ate less than three; for exam- 

 ple, when friends of mine called, as many did, to see the 

 bird. I could start him to "boring" by driving him about 

 the coop very gently. He would then get upon the dirt, 

 and with very little of the preliminary teetering, which I 

 describe further along, make a few rather short, hasty, 

 nervous thrusts, and finally extract and swallow a worm 

 —at the most two worms— not hungrily at all, but rather 

 as if he were trying to make sure of a little more of his 

 property before we stole it. He never (to my knowledge) 

 picked up a worm that lay upon the surface, or any 

 worm that was not entirely covered with soil. I have 

 several times seen him walk directly over those that were 

 exposed without paying them the least attention. Once 

 a worm that he had extracted slipped from his bill and 

 lay squirming about in plain sight, but he made no effort 

 to recover it. 



His manner of feeding was very nearly like that of Mr. 

 Eldon's woodcock, mentioned in your issue of Nov. 27, 

 1890, but as corroboration is always a good thing— and 

 my bird did not act precisely like his— I will include my 

 own observations, I am writing in the past tense, but 

 my narrative is a summary of copious notes made daily 

 while the bird was with me; in no instance am I trusting 

 to memory. 



When hungry my bird would walk out of his dark cor- 

 ner and step up, or hop up on the wet earth, stand there 

 usually for a short time motionless, then slowly and 

 methodically teeter or swing himself up and down as if 

 trying to throw his fullest weight upon his feet (but I 

 will speak of this further on), then, generally without 

 any preliminary pecking, thrust his bill into the mud, 

 sometimes two-thirds its length at the first trial, but oft- 

 ener pushing it in by degrees a third of its length perhaps 

 at a time, pulling it a little outward again to give the next 

 thrust greater force, and when probing deeply there was 

 a, rooting shake or energetic tremor to the head. If he 

 found a worm— and he almost always did, they were 

 planted so thickly— the bill was entirely withdrawn with 

 the worm held more or less crosswise between the partly 

 opened mandibles; it was;quickly worked around, how- 

 ever, until one end— it made no difference which— was 

 started straight and then swallowed. I never saw him 

 pull out a worm by its end, its position always had to be 

 changed, a little at least, before it was worked upward 

 and the swallowing really began. While watching;, my 

 eyes were usually within three or four feet of him and 

 often— after he had become more tame— within eighteen 

 inches of his bill. Sometimes after a momentary and 

 thoughtful pause, he would suddenly pull his beak from 

 a hole that he had made, and hurriedly start another very 

 near it, as though he had located the fellow while in the 

 first hole, but could not quite reach him. 



Though no one will claim that all the birds of any 

 species conduct themselves precisely alike upon all occa- 

 sions, yet it now seems entirely reasonable to infer that 

 no woodcock ever sucks a worm into its throat before 

 withdrawing its bill from the ground; that the term 



bog-sucker is a misnomer, and that Audubon would 

 not have "concluded" as he did, had he not watched his 

 woodcock m a "partially darkened" room. 



After a worm had been swallowed there was com- 

 monly a decided pause during which the bird remained 

 motionless—from forty- five seconds to three minutes let 

 us say— then the preliminary teetering began again. I 

 never saw him "cock his head on one side" in the act of 

 listening, and though he once made a quick little back- 

 ward jump while feeding, I saw no "dancing" or "stamp- 

 ing." While the teetering was going on both feet re- 

 mained upon the ground, and his wings were at all times 

 closely folded while standing or squatting, and though 

 while moving quickly or excited his tail was lifted, I 

 never saw it spread while the bird was on his feet. 



Whether this preliminary teetering or swinging lift 

 and fall of the body was to cause the worm below to 

 move and. thus reveal its whereabouts, or whether the 

 bird was simply pulling himself together for the muscular 

 effort that was' to follow — as a boy swings his arms and 

 body before jumping — remains an open question; but 

 the movement was more vigorous when it followed one 

 of his long periods of statue-like repose. A very mild 

 form of the teetering often preceded an evacuation. 



When, as sometimes happened, a worm which he had 

 extracted squirmed into a position that seemed to baffle 

 the powers of the bill alone he would lift his foot — as 

 others have described — in an impatient manner, brush it 

 quickly along the side of the bill and knock the worm 

 into place. He also used his toes to wipe the mud from 

 his beak; but I regret to say that my little woodcock was 

 sometimes very careless about his personal appearance, 

 and that he once sat for nearly an hour with a large 

 lump of mud resting on the upper mandible and the 

 pretty feathers of his forehead. 



He had no particular position for his feet while feed- 

 ing; at one time they would be side by side, at another 

 time one or the other would be advanced. His thrusts 

 were made at all sorts of angles; now directly downward 

 or perpendicularly, another time to the front at an angle 

 of forty-five degrees perhaps, or inwardly beneath his 

 breast, almost as far back as his toes, Once while prob- 

 ing in the last-named fashion he lost his balance and was 

 very near turning a forward somersault. 



I had heard from Dr. S. , who secured this woodcock for 

 me, that he and his friend Mr. B. had seen the bird turn 

 up the end of its upper mandible in a very peculiar and 

 inexplicable manner. I was urged to watch carefully for 

 a repetition of the occurrence. At the time I paid but 

 little attention to the statement, I was watching for so 

 many other events, but while carrying my bird out into 

 the country that last day of its confinement, my friend's re- 

 mark was most vividly recalled. 1 was holding the bird 

 in my hand with a handkerchief around him. covering all 

 but the bill, when suddenly, as he was making one of his 

 frequent struggles to get away, I saw that the upper 

 mandible was thrown upward as 1 have represented it in 

 the lower outline of the accompanying woodcut. For an 



instant I thought that the bird must have met with an 

 accident in some way, but as I touched the lifted mandi- 

 ble it was lowered to the usual position. Twice more dur- 

 ing my walk he threw up the mandible in the same 

 fashion, and each time I held him directly in front of my 

 eyes and studied most carefully the exact curvature. 

 There was no "dilation," nor any change of form other 

 than that which I describe. He once held the bill in 

 this strange position for nearly, if not quite, half a 

 minute. 



After liberating my captive and reaching home, I im- 

 mediately procured a woodcock that had been recently 

 killed, and found that I could easily curve Jits mandible 

 into the precise position into which my live bird could curve 

 his own at will. Though my outline was made from the 

 dead woodcock, it was drawn while the aspect of the live 

 bird was thoroughly fresh in my mind (within two hours 

 after I had witnessed the occurrence). For the purpose 

 of comparison I have also drawn the bill as it is commonly 

 seen. 



During the first day with me my bird made no sound 

 of any kind, and was somewhat frightened or depressed, 

 though not as much so as most birds Avould have been under 

 the circumstances— the woodcock is one of the most gentle 

 and trustful of birds, as every one knows, and so many 

 have testified — but on the following morning he seemed 

 quite reconciled to his surroundings, and but little dis- 

 turbed by my reappearance. He was so much at home, 

 indeed, that when I reached my hand for the worm box 

 he did not move away as he had done before, but stood 

 his ground manfully, uttering two very positive notes of 

 remonstrance. At this point of the proceedings the owner 

 of the greenhouse (Robert Marchant), who was standing 

 about ten feet from the cage, jumped for the outside door 

 with the exclamation, "Wild ducks going over— don't you 

 hear 'em!" I quickly motioned him to be silent and to 

 come nearer; and when it uttered a few more notes, more 

 squeaky than the first, Robert, who little knew what im- 

 portant evidence he was bearing, said: "That's the noise 

 they make when they jump up in the woods. It sounded 

 before like ducks a long way off." 



From that morning (Nov. 20) until I gave the bird its 

 freedom (Nov. 24) I could call forth these or similar notes, 

 day or evening, whenever I chose to do so, and more and 

 more easily as the bird grew tamer, by simply putting 

 my hand into the coop and moving it very slowly and 

 hesitatingly toward him. The notes, though having de- 

 cidedly similar qualities, varied from an almost dovelike 

 murmur to a positive and almost ratlike squeak. They 

 were sometimes uttered singly and sometimes two or 

 three in succession. 



The bird created quite a sensation locally, and a num- 

 ber of sportsmen came to see and hear him, and all these 

 gentlemen agree with me that the notes heard, or rather 

 some of those notes, were undeniably the sounds which 

 have caused so much discussion— the sounds, that is to 

 say, which are made by the flushed cock, and to which 



the words squeal, whistle, piping alarm note, twitter, 

 jingle, etc., have been applied. 



While my bird was "talking," there was not the least 

 movement of the wings nor of the bill, the mandibles re- 

 maining tightly closed. The only movement anywhere, 

 with the exception of a very slight drawing backward as 

 ray hand advanced, was in the throat or breast; it is im- 

 possible to say which, as the bird rarely showed any of 

 his neck while in the coop. He sat, stood, walked and 

 hopped with head drawn in to the shoulders, his breast 

 touching or nearly touching the base of the bill. 



The notes were seldom so loud or energetic as those 

 of the flushed bird, nor were most of them like those 

 heard in the cover. Yet at almost every trial there was 

 at least one squeaky enough to be regarded as very nearly 

 the sound we were listening for, certainly enough like 

 it to convince any doubter who happened to be present, 

 that a flushed cock "talks with its mouth." 



Some of the notes seemed absolute reproductions of 

 those of the flushed bird as we remember them; it is, of 

 course, impossible to recall them literally enough for nice 

 comparison, no matter how often they have thrilled us. 

 Once as I held the bird pinioned in my hand he made a 

 violent and almost successful struggle to free himself, ut- 

 tering at the same time two notes so thrillingly like 

 those of his wilder brother that for an instant I was 

 really unconscious of my surroundings, and the words 

 "mark cock" were very near my lips. I have listened 

 many times while my bird was flapping his wings, as I held 

 him (sometimes by the bill and sometimes by the legs) sus- 

 pended in the air, for those sounds which certain writers 

 have mentioned as being heard at such times. Once— 

 and once only— in over twenty trials I heard two very 

 faint peeps. Upon all other occasions there was no 

 sound but that of rapid fanning, and when the motion 

 was at its highest the cutting whit, vMt, whit of the 

 wings that would be made by many kinds of birds under 

 similar conditions. The two peeps (I do not know how 

 better to describe them) were the only doubtful sounds 

 that the bird was heard to make. They were so very 

 faint that my friend Mr. N., who was with me at the 

 time, heard only one of them, and our heads were as 

 near the bird's wings as we could get them without 

 being hit. Was that little sound, we asked each other, 

 vocal, or was it an intensified, whistling whit of the wing? 



Two of the sportsmen who witnessed my bird's per- 

 formances had been lifelong believers in the wing-twitter 

 theory, and they were very watchful critics; but after the 

 bird had been induced to utter a number of its notes, and 

 had been held up for the wing-beating or flapping per- 

 formance, and each wing had been carefully examined to 

 see if the attenuated primaries and pollex feathers were 

 in place, these gentlemen acknowledged that the sounds 

 about which so much has been said are vocal beyond 

 question, and that the whit, whit, whit of the pinions— no 

 matter how loudly and shrilly made in rapid flight— is 

 not liable ever to be confused with the vocal notes by 

 any one with an experience like ours. 



When a woodcock "twitters" he squeals, pipes, squeaks, 

 rather than whistles. The sound made in swift flight by 

 the wings of this and other species— many of our ducks 

 for example— is perhaps more appropriately termed a 

 whistle. Frank Forester makes the same distinction. He 

 speaks of the woodcock's flight after the leaves are off the 

 underbrush— of its darting away "on a vigorous and 

 whistling pinion, with sharp-piping alarm note, swift as 

 a rifle bullet." GuRDON Trtjmbull. 



Haetfobd, Conn. 



The Chickadee.— Number Four, N. Y— Your corres- " 

 pondent "Hermit" in his notes on the blackcap chicka- 

 dee carries the idea that it is a migratory bird, which 

 much surprised me, as I have always supposed that the 

 chickadee of the Adirondacks was cot migratory in its 

 habits. I do not remember a winter in the past forty 

 years but what I have seen these interesting birds at 

 midwinter brisk and lively seemingly to enjoy the cold 

 weather. For many years past they have wintered in 

 my yard, feeding upon meat hanging on the back porch 

 and are very tame. I saw chickadees last winter in the 

 Indian Territory, which induces me to think they might 

 be partially migratory in their habits, as they are natur- 

 ally a habitant of a colder climate. — Musset, [The 

 chickadee is a resident species in our Northern States. 

 That is, the bird may be found here at all seasons of the 

 year, but it is probable that the individuals seen in winter 

 are not usually those which breed with us. The black- 

 capped chickadees have a wide range north and south, 

 and east and west, and there is no doubt more or less of a 

 migratory movement among them as the seasons change.] 



\%tnt §&g md §jut(. 



The full texts of the game laws of all the States, Terri- 

 tories and British Provinces are given in the _Boo7c of the 

 Game Laios. 



WILD TURKEYS IN THE OVERFLOW— II. 



THAT alarm clock, with its tenacious, hang-on rattle, 

 is a good one to arouse a pair of sportsmen. No one 

 but L. could sleep through that, and he only pretends to. 

 Still on this morning, and I believe every morning during 

 the trip, he was reasonably easy to get up. It is on the 

 duck hunts, in cold weather, with rain pattering on the 

 roof , that he is difficult to arouse, though even then his 

 sportsman's blood brings him to time after a bit. 



The lamp is first lit, the pot, which had been filled last 

 night, was put on the little stove, the mosquito bar taken 

 down and put away, the bed rolled up in the oil cloth 

 and pushed well back toward the stern, and the provision 

 and dish box made convenient, when a search is insti- 

 tuted for provender. 



"Lawrence, what do you think Allen & Son have done?" 

 "Why, packed up for us sundry good things as per 

 order, of course." 

 "Here is our parched coffee— and not grdund." 

 "The deuec!" 

 "The deuce!" 



"Did Allen & Sons send a mill?" 



"Not much. Let's have tea." And tea we had. 



In the meantime William had busied himself making, 

 a fire on the bank of such rubbish as he could find in the 

 dark. It cracked and lit up the surrounding timber and 

 brush with a lurid light. It had a comfortable look. 



