Woodcock 
253 
is more wonderfully adapted to its work than 
the bill of these snipe, which is a long, straight 
boring instrument, its upper half fitted with a 
flexible tip for hooking the worm out of its hole 
as you would lift a string out of a jar on your 
hooked finger. Down goes the bill into the 
mud, sunk to the nostrils; then the upper tip 
feels around for its slippery victim. You need 
scarcely hope to see the probing performance 
because earth-worms, like mice, come out of 
their holes after dark, which is why snipe are 
most active then. 
A little boy once asked me this conundrum of 
his own making: “What is the difference 
between Martin Luther and a woodcock?’' 
Just a few differences suggested themselves, 
but I did not guess right the very first time; 
can you? “ One didn’t like a Diet of Worms and 
the other does,” was the small boy’s answer. 
After the ground freezes hard in the north- 
ern United States and Canada, the woodcock 
is compelled to go south of Virginia. But by 
the time the skunk cabbage and bright-green, 
fluted leaves of hellebore are pushing through 
the bogs and wet woodlands in earliest spring, 
back he comes again. An odd-looking, thick- 
necked, chunky fellow he is, less than a foot in 
length, his long, straight, stout bill sticking far 
out from his triangular head; his eyes placed 
so far back in the upper comers that he must 
