BOSTON EVENING- TRANSCRIPT. MONDAY, MAY 16. 1892. 
THE LISTENER. 
If you come with the Listener to a certain 
lately-cleared but novr bush-grown field not 
very far from Boston, on the edj?e of a large 
wood— a wild spot, stony and, yet not innocent 
of bogs and muddy places here and there— you 
may hear and see one of the strangest and most 
delightful of performances. It is the night-flight 
and love-song of the woodcock— that queer, 
uncouth water-bird who has taken to the land; 
whose ugly bull head, short legs, long bill and 
ungraceful ordinary movements are laughable; 
who is, nevertheless, worshipped by sportsmen; 
who is divine on the table, and who is capable 
of the most remarkable union of grace in move- 
ment and musical utterance, in his one great 
rapturous performance that so few people have 
seen or ever will see. 
_j_ _i_ _j_ 
You may see and hear it, that is, if yon come 
to the place when the bird is disposed to per- 
form, and arrive at the right time, just long 
enough after sunset so that the dusk shall 
have barely begun to gather, without making 
it dark as yet. Then you will very likely hear 
a sharp, grating bird-sound, which at first you 
take to be the shriek of a Bight hawk. But it 
comes from the level of the ground, and is less 
musical, if anything, than the night-hawk’s 
song. You hear it repeated at intervals, 
“jS 'peek, spee-ee/c , f>pee-uk t ” from the ground 
not far away. This is the “bleating” 
of the woodcock. You listen curiously 
while the bird reels off this harsh and 
disagreeable soliloquy; perhaps you have 
heard that it is preliminary to nis much more 
interesting performance, and you are impatient 
to see and hear that. The speek is intermitted 
for a moment; and then you hear, seemingly 
from far away — and yet is it not in your very 
ears? — a steady, musical, whistling crescendo 
sound. There he goes ! The woodcock's ascent 
has begun. Now you see him, rising in a slant- 
ing straight line, coming straight over your 
head, his body held stiff and taut, his wings 
beating swiftly, his course steadily up and 
away ; you fancy he is going to fly away out of 
sight; but while he is still in plain view, he 
veers to the right and begins a long curve or 
circle, still upward; and all the while continues 
that singular, musical wh^tling crescendo. 
h — i — t 
Now he is fairly launched upon his great 
ascending spiral. He rises more and more 
swiftly ; the note niade by his whistle takes a 
higher and higher pitch, and the throbs are 
closer together. His spiral has at first covered 
so wide a space that you have been compelled 
to twist your body upon the ground where you 
are crouching to keep your eyes upon him ; but 
now, as he mounts higher, the circles which he 
is describing become smaller and smaller. At 
the same time his whistle— one can only call it a 
whistle for want of a better word, for the sound 
is indescribable— takes a >ort of rhythm; it is 
like the rhythm which a person falls into who 
is playing scales upon the upper octaves of a 
piano so rapidly that he can no longer 
make them sound regular and even. Higher, 
higher mounts the bird until he is a mere speck 
and yet you can still see the swift beat- 
ing of those wings. Now the circles of 
his spiral are very small ; he is mad with 
ecstacy. For an instant he seems to flutter at 
the very apex as if he must die with joy if he 
went any further, and yet were unwilling to 
descend ; and just at that fluttering instant you 
begin to hear a new and still more ecstatic 
sound— a soft murmuring note between a whis- 
per and a cry— zup-zup— then the old whistle 
begins spasmodically again— the bird flutters 
and falls a little— zup-zup-ziip— that soft, deli- 
cious, intensely musical note is repeated— the 
bird seems to tip downward sidewise slowly, 
reluctantly— the whistle and the other wonder- 
ful note begin to sound simultaneously; and as 
the bird sinks and falls faster and faster from 
liis height, he gives himself up in a melancholy 
rapture to this steadily repeated sound ; and now 
he drops, limp and quite silest, and so swiftly 
that you fancy he must be hurt, straight to the 
very spot in the field from which he Went up ; 
and in another moment you hear once more the 
harsh call : Speek— spee-eek—spee- uk! 
4- 4- -t- 
It is indeed a fall from the sublime to the 
ridiculous. Here he is grating, squeaking away 
again on the earth— this bird which hut the 
moment before had been rapt in an aerial 
ecstacy. He keeps it up for two or three minutes 
at least— a longer time, probably, than he has 
spent in his musical flight ; for, though you were 
too much excited while the performance lasted 
j to take any note of time, it is probably not i 
I longer than a minute and a half. But he does [ 
! not "bleat” very long. Ohoe more you hear 
that vague whistle, far away and yet so near, 
and yon know he is mounting again; once 
more he shoots straight over your head; and 
again he is mounting his ecstatic spiral— accel- 
erating, climbing the musical scale as well as. 
the vault of heaven; his whistle getting all the 
weird effect of a sound coming from high in the 
air, and yet becoming more clearly to be 
heard as tlla creature goes up. Once more the 
attainment of the apex, onoe more that deli- 
cious reluctance to return to earth, once niore 
that most musical-melancholy whispering, 
once more the drop straight to earth and the re- ; 
commencement of the harsh quacking refrain 
there. By and by he goes up again ; and 
you listen and watch, enchanted, until, 
with the increasing darkness, and the height of 
his ascent, you lose sight of the bird, and 
his performance is to the ear only— a voice and 
nothing more— and yet the more intensely 
weird because yon cannot see whence it comes, 
Very likely the performance is repeated seven 
or eight times, You Wonder that the little 
bird can find the strength to make such a series 
Of tremendous flights; and while you are won- 
dering, and incidentally listening to a whip- 
poor-will who is singing, a , ,ud unplaint from 
the edge of the woods close by, you become 
aware that the speek, svee-eek is no longer 
sounding; and you listen in vain for any far- 
ther music from vour woodcock. 
-f 1 — r 
Bnt unless you are a dull sort of person you 
carry the singular music home with you and 
hear it again and again, and wonder at it, as 
you lie in bed. Never, you think, was utter 
rapture so completely expressed at once in ae- 
| tion and in sound. You wonder, as everybody 
has done who has heard the sound and seen the 
sight, how the whistling is produced— whether 
it is the swift rushing of the bird’s wings or a 
song from his throat. You fancy that it must 
be done with his wings, bocause it seems im- 
possible that the creature could fly with such 
force and sing all the time. But the descend 
I ingzwp ziip— that is surely done with the throat, 
| for you have heard the whistling, like an ac- 
companiment or obbligato in it, at least apart of 
the time. Its musioal quality is as unquestion, 
able as it is indescribable; and, somehow *;< 
. seems to you as much a miracle as it won . 4 j 
seem to hear a swan sing. Rather more, in* j 
deed, for the swan on the water is always bean- ! 
tifnl at least, and the woodcock is never beau- j 
tiful. ______ f 
