and all on a route must be covered during a period of about 
35 minutes. Thus, routes with the most stops occur in more 
continuous breeding habitat. Counts on these routes could 
be expected to be higher than on routes with a few stops 
located in a limited amount of suitable cover, where much 
of the available listening time is spent in driving between 
stops. 
Adjustments of the data were made for routes that did 
not have the same number of stops each year. Data for the 
year with the larger number of stops were reduced to make 
them comparable to those for the year with the smaller num¬ 
ber of stops. For example, in 1963* 10 tirds were heard at 
11 stops on route 27 in Maine; 12 birds were recorded at 13 
stops on the same route in 196k. For comparative purposes, 
the 12 birds in 196^ were reduced to 10 birds, the estimated 
number that would have been heard if' 11 rather than 13 stops 
had been covered. In most instances, the necessary adjust¬ 
ments were slight (table l). Results of counts on individual 
routes covered in 1963 and 196^ are shown in tables 6 and 7* 
Weighting factors 
When survey information from different' States and Pro¬ 
vinces is combined, it must be weighted because the number 
of routes in each area is not related to woodcock population 
size. Adequate figures on population density in suitable 
breeding habitat are lacking. As a substitute, the average 
number of woodcock per route was weighted according to the 
uncultivated area of each State or Province (adjusted in a 
few cases for large portions that occur in ecological regions 
where there is no woodcock habitat). The relative sizes of 
areas are shown in table 2 . Further details are in the i960 
Woodcock Status Report (U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 
Special Scientific Report--Wildlife No. 50). It is real¬ 
ized that much unfavorable nesting habitat is included. 
Results 
Table 1 shows the changes from 1963 to 196^ in numbers 
of woodcock recorded on survey routes, adjusted only for 
varying numbers of stops along the same routes in the 2 years. 
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