412 
^tturjtl fjistory. 
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 11A.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 12xGin., 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 horns, 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- j 
measuring the worms and finding how many were gone. | 
After eating all he wanted — from 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 in a “partially darkened” room. 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
After a worm had been swallowed there was com- . 
monly a decided pause during which the bird remained I 
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 I 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 j 
of any kind, and was somewhat frightened or depressed, 
though not as much so as most birds would 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 I 
say, which are made by the flushed cock, and to which 1 
| J i > X j j, | [Dec. 11, 1890. 
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 
my 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 1 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, whit, 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 Trumbull. 
Hartford, Conn. 
THE AMERICAN WOODCOCK. 
T HE article on the woodcock, contributed to this week’s 
Forest and Stream by Mr. Gurdon Trumbull, is 
perhaps the most important essay on this bird that has 
ever been published. To the sportsman, and more es- 
pecially to the sportsman who is a naturalist as well, it 
is as entertaining as a novel, and holds the attention 
from its beginning to its end. While many of the obser- 
vations recorded in this article are merely confirmatory 
of those which have been made by others it contains 
several points which are entirely new and would seem 
to finally dispose of the vexed question as to how the 
woodcock whistles. Every one who has followed the 
literature of this subject will remember what diverse views 
have been held on this point, and how earnestly it has 
been debated pro and con, such an eminent naturalist as 
Mr. Brewster, with a vast number of sportsmen, taking 
the ground that the sound is made by the wings, while 
an almost equal number of writers, some of them well- 
known, have held that the woodcock literally, as Mr. 
Trumbull puts it, “talks with his mouth.” 
We do not recollect that any man has ever before stated 
that he has seen the woodcock curve up the tip of his 
upper mandible as recorded by Mr. Trumbull, although 
the bird’s ability to do this was inferred from an examina- 
tion of its boring holes, in a note published in Forest and 
Stream of Nov. 6 last. 
Mr. Trumbull’s observations were conducted with the 
extremest care, and the results will delight all who are 
interested in shooting, or in natural history. The value 
of such a study of our game birds can hardly be over- 
estimated. 
It must be remembered that Mr. Trumbull is a trained 
ornithologist, a careful and accurate observer, and thus 
that his observations are entitled to much more weight 
than those of a man who— however honest he might be 
could not weigh evidence and draw just conclusions 
with the certainty of a scientific man. Mr. Trumbull’s 
important and fascinating book entitled “Names and 
Portraits of Birds Interesting to Gunners” has a placelin 
every ornithological library in the country, and we doubt 
not in most sportsmen’s libraries. It is a piece of good 
work, well done, and is to our mind the most entertain- 
ing book on game birds ever written. 
I dark. It cracked and lit up the surrounding timber and 
' brush with a lurid light. It had a comfortable look, 
