Each random route was 8 miles in length and contained 21 stops 
at O.4-mile intervals. Stops were examined by car prior to the 
survey period and were judged for their suitability for "singing" 
woodcock during the breeding season. Stops were classified as 
good, satisfactory, poor, and unsatisfactory on the basis of 
type and distribution of vegetative cover within a 0.2-mile 
radius (approximate maximum hearing range of "peenting" wood- 
cock) from the stop. Our knowledge of what constituted 
satisfactory singing-ground habitat was quite limited. For 
this reason, judgment of stop suitability was conservative, 
and comparatively few stops were considered unsatisfactory. 
Since e minutes would be spent listening at a stop during 
a total census period of 35 minutes, many of the 21 stops on 
each route could not be surveyed in the allotted time. It was 
also anticipated that many stops considered poor or unsatis- 
factory would lack "singing" birds when counts were made. 
Therefore, the sample included all satisfactory or good stops, 
but only every fourth poor and every sixth unsatisfactory 
stop. Stops judged good or satisfactory were sampled out of 
aan to their abundance to increase the efficiency of 
e survey. 
Because many routes would lack "singing" birds at the 
first stop, a starting time for counting was given for each 
route. This was the time at which 84 percent (mean time plus 
one standard deviation) of the birds heard in previous years 
began singing at the first stop on operational routes run in 
the State. 
Random routes were censused for the first time in 1963. 
Results of counts are shown in tables 3 and 4. As expected, 
some stops and even some routes could not be censused because 
of traffic conditions, time limitations, noise, etc. Thus, 
average numbers of birds heard on stops of each category 
covered in each of the two strata were used to estimate numbers 
of birds that would have been heard had all stops been covered. 
The average number of birds heard per stop agreed closely 
with our judgment of suitability of stops; the highest averages 
occurred on good stops and the lowest on unsatisfactory stops 
(table 3). Table 4 shows the relative population sizes of 
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