Evidence 
indicating: 
that the 
female 
Woodcock 
utters 
both peep 
and pt-1 
notes 
3 /sj U %. 
incessantly and his whistling was continuous. When it became 
broken I saw with absolute distinctness that during each pause 
or interval his wings ceased beating for an instant. I do not 
think they were moved at all from the time he got his song 
fairly started to that when he reached the earth, but they 
were vibrated a few times at the beginning of the song and I 
could distinctly hear their whistling sound mingling with the 
vocal notes. During the song the bird was constantly des¬ 
cending, at first on long, easy inclines, finally by a suc¬ 
cession of short, steep pitches at the end of each of which 
he checked himself suddenly for a moment just as the Sky¬ 
lark does. The song ceased when he was about eighty feet 
above the earth and his final and silent descent to it was 
made on set wings, nearly vertically and with arrowy swiftness. 
While this bird was in the air, rising for his second 
song flight, I was surprised to hear another peep once just 
beyond a stone wall and very near me. When the first bird 
returned to the earth and began peeping again,'the second an¬ 
swered him several times in precisely the same tone. After 
this it peeped intermittently, a dozen times perhaps, always 
when the other bird was on the ground and peeping steadily. 
At first I thought it was another male and that it would 
presently mount into the air and sing, but as it did not do 
so and as its peeping was at no time steady or persistent, I 
finally concluded that it was the singer*s mate , although I 
have never before suspected that the female Yfoodcock utters 
7 
