176 
FRANK FORESTER^ FIELD SPORTS. 
stantly; by night he seeks his food; by night he makes his 
long and direct migrations, choosing for this latter purpose 
foggy weather, at or about the full of the moon. 
By day he lies snugly ensconced in some lonely brake, 
among long grass and fern, under the shade of the dark alder 
or the silvery willow, and near to some marshy level, or muddy 
streamlet’s brink during the summer; but, in the autumn, on 
some dry westering hill-side, clothed with dense second-growth 
and saplings. 
In very quiet spots, especially where the covert overhead is 
dense and shadowy, he sometimes feeds by day; and it has 
been my fortune once or twice to come upon him unsuspected 
when so engaged, and to watch him for many minutes probing 
the soft loam, which he loves the best, with his long bill, and 
drawing forth his succulent food, from the smallest red wire- 
worm to the largest lob-worm, suitable for the angler’s bait 
when fishing for Perch or the Yellow Bass of the Lakes. 
It is by the abundance of this food that his selection of haunts 
is dictated, and his choice of seasons, in some considerable de¬ 
gree, controlled. On sandy and hungry soils, as of Long Island, 
for example, he is found rarely in comparison, and never in the 
large congregations which so rejoice the heart of the sportsman 
in more favored localities. Still more does he eschew soui 
marsh land and peat bogs, wherein, by the way, the worn he 
most affects hardly exists; while on fat loamy bottom lands, 
whether the color of the soil be red or black, rich with decom¬ 
posed vegetable matter, he may be found in swarms. 
It must be understood, however, that after the young brood 
have left the parent birds, which departure occurs after the first 
moult, the Woodcock is a solitary bird, acting and moving for 
himself alone, although the same causes may draw hundreds of 
them to one neighborhood, and never flying in flocks or associa¬ 
ting in anywise with his fellows, until the commencement of the 
breeding season. 
At this period of the year, from July I mean, to the begin¬ 
ning of the moult, when the bird disappears from among us for 
