538 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[April 2, 1910. 
setts, a misnomer. He said that if a gunner 
went south and there killed ducks he was al¬ 
lowed to bring fifty of them into Massachusetts. 
The chairman of the committee stated that on 
their recent trip to Oak Bluffs the members were 
told by Mr. Look, who owns all the land around 
one of the ponds, that 1,200 ducks were shot last 
year by him and his friends on that pond, on 
which by the way he has the fishing rights under 
a lease from the State. 
Mr. Poland cited as an instance in favor of 
the bill the law prohibiting the use of black duck 
decoys on Nantucket Island. If the principle 
be a good one, he thought, it should not be 
monopolized by the people on that island. 
Representative Kane, of Whitman, championed 
the cause of the remonstrants, but had a few 
words to say in favor of giving the Cape gun¬ 
ners on the shores a chance at the ducks in the 
first part of the winter. Others opposed to the 
bill were: C. M. Bryant, of Quincy; Represen¬ 
tative Moore, of Duxbury; Harry Marston, of 
Brockton; Hon. Moody Kimball, of Essex 
county, who remarked that he saw none of the 
members of the Audubon Society among the 
supporters of the measure. Several claimed that 
without the live decoys they could get no birds. 
One witness said he was paying a town tax on 
each of his decoys of five dollars a year. Mr. 
James Kirby claimed that the Cape people had 
put the bill in for the purpose of getting back 
on the men who pushed the bill of last year. I 
have attended every hearing before the fish and 
game committee for more than ten years, and 
during that time have never seen a larger num¬ 
ber of the gunners of the State in attendance. 
Not only was every seat taken, but all standing 
room was occupied. Notwithstanding the chair¬ 
man insisted on each witness being brief, after 
a three hours’ session many men who desired to 
speak could not be heard for lack of time. The 
committee has not as yet made its report on this 
bill, but I am told by a member of the commit¬ 
tee that it will recommend as the opening date 
on black duck, redhead and bluebills Nov. 1 in¬ 
stead of Sept. 15, as now. 
Henry H. Kimball. 
The Woodcock. 
The questions printed last autumn were these: 
1. Do woodcock breed in your locality, or do you see 
them only during flight? 
2. If they breed, are they numerous or scarce in sum¬ 
mer? How many nests have you heard of in any one 
year? Give the year. 
3. If they breed, do the home-bred birds disappear be¬ 
fore the flight birds come on, and about what time do the 
home-bred birds disappear? 
4. When does the flight begin? When do you see the 
first of those which you regard as flight birds? 
5. How long does the flight last? 
6. When are the flight birds present in greatest num¬ 
bers? Give not only date, but weather conditions on 
which the rush so largely depends. 
7. How late do you see the birds? 
8. How did the flights of the autumn of 1907, 1908 and 
1909 compare with the flights of the three years before 
1907? , , . , 
9. Please give any views that you may have which will 
throw any light on the problems of woodcock breeding 
and migration, and the question of whether they are at 
the present time increasing or decreasing in numbers. 
10. Is the colored man of the South a woodcock hunter 
to an important degree? What are his methods of 
capture? 
11. Is the open season m most Southern States too 
long considering the scarcity of woodcock? 
Buffalo, N. Y.— Editor Forest and Stream: 
Replying to your inquiries in relation to the 
woodcock I would answer some of them as 
follows: 
1 know of a number of localities within forty 
miles of this city where woodcock breed. I 
have seen a number of their nests containing 
three or four eggs, never having found more 
than four in one nest. 
Generally speaking I have' found them more 
numerous in July than in the early part of Sep¬ 
tember. In April, 1898, a party while snipe 
shooting in Niagara county found seven wood¬ 
cock nests containing eggs. I heard of five nests 
this year in different localities, but did not see 
them myself. 
Your third query is hard to answer, especially 
since the close season has been extended to Oct. 
1. In my opinion the shooting we had last year 
was principally on home birds. There did not 
seem to be much of a late flight in. After the 
home birds were killed out of certain covers, no 
other birds came in to take their place. A 
heavy snow storm on Oct. 17 may have caused 
this. 
In this locality the flight generally begins from 
the 5th to the 15th of October. 
I think that this depends very much on the 
season and weather conditions and would not 
want to say just how long. Please note answer 
to question three. 
I have found the largest flights from the 15th 
to the 20th of October; going back as far as 
1901 it has varied very little from that date, 
whether the weather was dry or wet. 
I have seen woodcock as late as Nov. 10 and 
saw one last year on Nov. 6. 
The largest flight of birds I have seen in re¬ 
cent years was on Oct. 15 and 16, 1901, when 
a friend and myself easily got twenty-four birds 
in the two days and saw nearly as many more. 
In 1904 the season opened Sept. 16; on this date 
and Sept. 17 three of us got twenty-one. These 
were evidently home bred birds. In 1905 and 
1906 birds were not so plenty early in the sea¬ 
son, but there was a good flight later; 1907 was 
the poorest season I have seen in many years; 
1908 was much better. This year, as before 
stated, the conditions were peculiar and the birds 
acted very strangely. I think there are fully as 
many birds visiting this part of the State as 
there were five years ago. 
I think that it was wise to make the open 
season Oct. 1, and if the laws are well observed 
and there is no inducement to shoot for the 
market, we ought to have woodcock with us 
for some time. 
I can give you no answer to questions ten and 
eleven. E. P. R. 
Hendersonville, N. C., March 21. — Editor 
Forest and Stream: The woodcock is one of 
our most interesting game birds. I, for one, 
am not thoroughly well informed as to his 
habits. 
Up here in our mountain country woodcock 
nest every year, and judging from the birds’ 
love song heard the latter part of February, 
the nesting is then well under way. We also 
have flights of these birds in November, the 
birds all going South as soon as the ground 
freezes in mid-winter. This last winter all were 
gone by the end of December, but this last 
winter was our coldest in ten or twelve years 
past. 
I do not go about their nesting grounds in 
the nesting season, but I know of them being 
seen when quite young in the summer. All 
birds seem to disappear as soon as the ground 
freezes, but in very open winters here the home 
birds remain during winter. 
The flights are of very short duration and 
seem always to come about the 20th of Novem¬ 
ber or thereabouts. There were more woodcock 
in this country in the falls of 1908 and 1909 
than for many previous years. My limited ex¬ 
perience goes to show that few, if any, but 
sportsmen kill woodcock. 
Time and again have I met men, white and 
negroes, and put the question: “Have you seen 
any woodcock about here?” And often the 
answer has come “Yes, I saw one a while ago 
knocking on a dead tree back yonder.” Of 
course a woodpecker. Personally I never knew 
a negro to shoot or kill or catch a woodcock. 
In the rice fields of the South the negroes kill 
by torch light numbers of coots with sticks. 
They kill them in large numbers on the ditches. 
It may be some of these people in killing coots 
thought they were bagging woodcock, yet the 
Southern negro knows the coot well enough. 
In answer to question eleven I will say that 
practically the whole year is open season, for 
without properly paid game wardens it is a year 
round open season for all game in many locali¬ 
ties. 
I have talked with numbers of men who did 
not know and never had heard of the wood¬ 
cock’s love song, yet they had unknowingly often 
heard it, and as soon as I asked the question, 
“Have you not late in the evening, about dusk 
and after, heard near swampy places the sharp 
call, ‘Beek, beek’ repeated several times, and if 
you were near enough. the wings of the bird 
as he rose in circles, his song more and more 
rapid as he swiftly mounts higher and higher?” 
“Why, yes, was that a woodcock? I have 
often heard it, but did not know what it was.” 
Yes, woodcock have various local names, com¬ 
monly mud snipe. Red-headed woodpeckers are 
called woodcock, and as yet it is hard to say 
of the woodcock whence he comes and whither 
he goes, but he needs protection. 
Ernest L. Ewbank. 
Southampton, L. I.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: Answers to questions by numbers: 
1. Yes; they breed here. 
2. Fairly numerous during summer. 
3. No; about Nov. 15; depends on weather. 
4. About Oct. 20. 
5. About ten days. 
6. Last week of October; depends on if we 
have a full moon and cold northwest wind. 
7. One or two birds in a day’s hunt up to 
Dec. 1. 
8. Do not know. 
9. Think they are holding their own here, 
due to the cat brier swamps where they live, 
being impassable to most dogs. 
11. Do not know. Henry H. Thorp. 
New York Legislature. 
By Senator Rose—Relating to the open season 
for deer, the taking of minnows for bait and to 
the use of tip-ups in Sullivan county. 
By Assemblyman Perkins, of Broome—Pro¬ 
hibiting the taking by one person of more than 
ten hares or rabbits in any one day. It also 
strikes out the prohibition against the hunting 
of hares and Rabbits with ferrets. 
By Assemblyman Evans—Relating to deer in 
Sullivan and Orange counties. 
