252 Birds Every Child Should Know 
ever you may choose to call tt? As if it had 
not yet decided whether to be a beach bird or 
a woodland dweller, a wader or a perching 
songster, it is equally at home along the sea- 
shore or on wooded uplands, wherever ditches, 
pools, streams, creeks, swamps, and wet mea- 
dows furnish its favourite foods. It stays 
with us through the long summer. Did you 
ever see it go through any of the queer motions 
that have earned for it so many names ? Jerk- 
ing up first its head, then its tail, it walks with 
a funny, bobbing, tipping, see-saw gait, as if 
it were self-conscious and conceited. Still 
another popular name was given from its sharp 
call peet-weet, peet-weet, rapidly repeated, and 
usually uttered as the bird flies in graceful 
curves over the water or inland fields. 
WOODCOCK 
Called also: Blind, Wall-eyed, Mud, Bigheaded, 
Wood, and Whistling Snipe; Bog-sucker; Bog- 
bird; Timber Doodle 
Whenever you see little groups of clean-cut 
holes dotted over the earth in low, wet ground, 
you may know that either the woodcock or 
Wilson’s snipe has been there probing for worms. 
Not even the woodpecker’s combination tool 
