178 
WADING BIRDS. 
motion of the body, the word blatk, and sometimes paip palp, 
is uttered. This uncouth and guttural bleating seems a singular 
contrast to the delightful serenade of which this is uniformly 
the close. I heard this piping and bleating in the marshes of 
West Cambridge on the r5th of April, and the birds had 
arrived about the first week in that month. This nocturnal 
music continued at regular intervals, and in succession until 
near nine o’clock in the evening, and is prolonged for a 
number of days during the period of incubation, probably 
ceasing with the new cares attendant on the hatching of the 
brood. The female, as in the European species, is greatly 
attached to her nest, and an instance is related to me of a hen 
being taken up from it and put on again without attempting 
to fly. Mr. Latham mentions a female of the Common Wood- 
cock sitting on her eggs so tamely that she suffered herself to 
be stroked on the back without offering to rise, and the male, 
no less interested in the common object of their cares, sat also 
close at hand. The European species has had the credit of 
exercising so much ingenuity and affection as to seize upon 
one of its weakly young and carry it along to a place of 
security from its enemies. Mr. Ives, of Salem, once on flush- 
ing an American Woodcock from its nest, was astonished to 
see that it carried off in its foot one of its brood, the only one 
which happened to be newly hatched ; and as the young run 
immediately on leaving the shell, it is obvious that the little 
nursling could be vvell reared, or all of them as they might 
appear, without the aid of the nest, now no longer secured 
from intrusion. In New England this highly esteemed game is 
common in the markets of Boston to the close of October, 
but they all disappear in the latter part of December. In this 
quarter of the Union they are scarcely in order for shooting 
before the latter end of July or beginning of August ; but from 
this time to their departure they continue in good condition 
for the table. 
The springes, or springers, set for Woodcocks in Europe in 
places they are found to frequent by the evidence of their 
borings, etc., are commonly formed of an elastic stick, to 
