Whitooweek, the woodcock, the strangest hermit in all the woods, is a
bird of mystery. Only the hunters know anything about him, and they
know him chiefly as a glorious bird that flashes up to the alder tops
with a surprised twitter before their dogs, and poises there a moment
on whirring wings to get his bearings, and then from his vantage-point
at the moment of his exultation he either falls down dead at the bang
of their guns and the rip of shot through the screen of leaves, or
else happily he slants swiftly down to another hiding-place among the
alders. To the hunters, who are practically his only human
acquaintances, he is a game bird pure and simple, and their interest
is chiefly in his death. The details of his daily life he hides from
them, and from all others, in the dark woods, where he spends all the
sunny hours, and in the soft twilight when he stirs abroad, like an
owl, after his long day's rest. Of a hundred farmers on whose lands I
have found Whitooweek or the signs of his recent feeding, scarcely
five knew from observation that such a bird existed, so well does he
play the hermit under our very noses.
The reasons for this are many. By day he rests on the ground in some
dark bit of cover, by a brown stump that exactly matches his feathers,
or in a tangle of dead leaves and brakes where it is almost impossible
to see him. At such times his strange fearlessness of man helps to
hide him, for he will let you pass within a few feet of him without
stirring. That is partly because he sees poorly by day and perhaps
does not realize how near you are, and partly because he knows that
his soft colors hide him so well amidst his surroundings that you
cannot see him, however near you come. This confidence of his is well
placed, for once I saw a man step over a brooding woodcock on her nest
in the roots of an old stump without seeing her, and she never moved
so much as the tip of her long bill as he passed. In the late twilight
when woodcock first stir abroad you see only a shadow passing swiftly
across a bit of clear sky as Whitooweek goes off to the meadow brook
to feed, or hear a rustle in the alders as he turns the dead leaves
over, and a faint _peeunk_, like the voice of a distant night-hawk,
and then you catch a glimpse of a shadow that flits along the ground,
or a weaving, batlike flutter of wings as you draw near to
investigate. No wonder, under such circumstances, that Whitooweek
passes all his summers and raises brood upon brood of downy invisible
chicks in a farmer's wood lot without ever being found out or
recognized.
My own acquaintance with Whitooweek began when I was a child, when I
had no name to give the strange bird that I watched day after day, and
when those whom I asked for information laughed at my description and
said no such bird existed. It was just beyond the upland pasture where
the famous Old Beech Partridge lived. On the northern slopes were some
dark, wet maple woods, and beyond that the ground slanted away through
scrub and alders to a little wild meadow where cowslips grew beside
the brook. One April day, in stealing through the maple woods, I
stopped suddenly at seeing something shining like a jewel almost at my
feet. It was an eye, a bird's eye; but it was some moments before I
could realize that it was really a bird sitting there on her nest
between the broken ends of an old stub that had fallen years ago.
I backed away quietly and knelt down to watch the queer find. Her bill
was enormously long and straight, and her eyes were 'way up at the
back of her head--that was the first observation. Some wandering horse
had put his hoof down and made a hollow in the dry rotten wood of the
fallen stub. Into this hollow a few leaves and brown grass stems had
been gathered,--a careless kind of nest, yet serving its purpose
wonderfully, for it hid the brooding mother so well that one might
step on her without ever knowing that bird or nest was near. This was
the second wondering observation, as I made out the soft outlines of
the bird sitting there, apparently without a thought of fear, within
ten feet of my face.
I went away quietly that day and left her undisturbed; and I remember
perfectly that I took with me something of the wonder, and something
too of the fear, with which a child naturally meets the wild things
for the first time. That she should be so still and fearless before me
was a perfect argument to a child that she had some hidden means of
defense--the long bill, perhaps, or a hidden sting--with which it was
not well to trifle. All that seems very strange and far away to me
now; but it was real enough then to a very small boy, alone in the
dark woods, who met for the first time a large bird with an enormously
long bill and eyes 'way up on the back of her head where they plainly
did not belong, a bird moreover that had no fear and seemed perfectly
well able to take care of herself. So I went away softly and wondered
about it.
Next day I came back again. The strange bird was there on her nest as
before, her long bill resting over the edge of the hollow and looking
like a twig at the first glance. She showed no fear whatever, and
encouraged at her quietness and assurance I crept nearer and nearer
till I touched her bill with my finger and turned it gently aside. At
this she wiggled it impatiently, and my first child's observation was
one that has only recently been noticed by naturalists, namely, that
the tip of the upper bill is flexible and can be moved about almost
like the tip of a finger in order to find the food that lies deep in
the mud, and seize it and drag it out of its hiding. At the same time
she uttered a curious hissing sound that frightened me again and made
me think of snakes and hidden stings; so I drew back and watched her
from a safe distance. She sat for the most part perfectly motionless,
the only movement being an occasional turning of the long bill; and
once when she had been still a very long time, I turned her head aside
again, and to my astonishment and delight she made no objection, but
left her head as I had turned it, and presently she let me twist it
back again. After her first warning she seemed to understand the
situation perfectly, and had no concern for the wondering child that
watched her and that had no intention whatever of harming her or her
nest.
Others had laughed at my description of a brown bird with a long bill
and eyes at the back of her head that let you touch her on her nest,
so I said no more to them; but at the first opportunity I hunted up
Natty Dingle and told him all about it. Natty was a gentle, harmless,
improvident little man, who would never do any hard work for pay,--it
gave him cricks in his back, he said,--but would cheerfully half kill
himself to go fishing through the ice, or to oblige a neighbor. So far
as he earned a living he did it by shooting and fishing and trapping
and picking berries in their several seasons, and by gathering
dandelions and cowslips (kew-slops he called them) in the spring and
peddling them good-naturedly from door to door. Most of his time in
pleasant weather he spent in roaming about the woods, or lying on his
back by the pond shore where the woods were thickest, fishing lazily
and catching fish where no one else could ever get them, or watching
an otter's den on a stream where no one else had seen an otter for
forty years. He knew all about the woods, knew every bird and beast
and plant, and one boy at least, to my knowledge, would rather go with
him for a day's fishing than see the president's train or go to a
circus.
Unlike the others, Natty did not laugh at my description, but listened
patiently and told me I had found a woodcock's nest,--a rare thing,
he said, for though he had roamed the woods so much, and shot hundreds
of the birds in season, he had never yet chanced upon a nest. Next day
he went with me, to see the eggs, he said; but, as I think of it now,
it was probably with a view of locating the brood accurately for the
August shooting. As we rounded the end of the fallen stub the
woodcock's confidence deserted her at sight of the stranger, and she
slipped away noiselessly into the leafy shadows. Then we saw her four
eggs, very big at one end, very little at the other, and beautifully
colored and spotted.
Natty, who was wise in his way, merely glanced at the nest and then
drew me aside into hiding, and before we knew it, or had even seen her
approach, Mother Woodcock was brooding her eggs again. Then Natty, who
had doubted one part of my story, whispered to me to go out; and the
bird never stirred as I crept near on hands and knees and touched her
as before.
A few minutes later we crept away softly, and Natty took me to the
swamp to show me the borings, telling me on the way of the woodcock's
habits as he had seen them in the fall hunting. The borings we found
in plenty wherever the earth was soft,--numerous holes, as if made
with a pencil, where the woodcock had probed the earth with her long
bill. She was hunting for earthworms, Natty told me,--a queer mistake
of his, and of all the bird books as well, for in the primitive alder
woods and swamps where the borings are so often seen, there are no
earthworms, but only slugs and soft beetles and delicate white grubs.
Woodcock hunt by scent and feeling, and also by listening for the
slight sounds made by the worms underground, he told me, and that is
why the eyes are far back on the head, to be out of the way, and also
to watch for danger above and behind while the bird's bill is deep in
the mud. And that also explains why the tip of the bill is flexible,
so that when the bird bores in the earth and has failed to locate the
game accurately by hearing, the sensitive tip of the bill feels
around, like a finger, until it finds and seizes the morsel. All this
and many things more he told me as we searched through the swamp for
the signs of Mother Woodcock's hunting and made our way home together
in the twilight. Some things were true, some erroneous; and some were
a curious blending of accurate traditions and imaginative folk-lore
from some unknown source, such as is still held as knowledge of birds
and beasts in all country places; and these were the most interesting
of all to a child. And the boy listened, as a devotee listens to a
great sacred concert, and remembered all these things and afterwards
sifted them and found out for himself what things were true.
When I went back to the spot, a few days later, the nest was deserted.
A few bits of shell scattered about told me the story, and that I
must now hunt for the little woodcocks, which are almost impossible to
find unless the mother herself show you where they are. A week later,
as I prowled along the edge of the swamp, a sudden little brown
whirlwind seemed to roll up the leaves at my feet. In the midst of it
I made out the woodcock fluttering away, clucking, and trailing now a
wing and now a leg, as if desperately hurt. Of course I followed her
to see what was the matter, forgetting the partridge that had once
played me the same pretty trick to decoy me away from her chicks. When
she had led me to a safe distance all her injuries vanished as at the
touch of magic. She sprang up on strong wings, whirled across the
swamp and circled swiftly back to where I had first started her. But
I did not find one of the little woodcocks, though I hunted for them
half an hour, and there were four of them, probably, hiding among the
leaves and grass stems under my very eyes.
The wonderful knowledge gleaned from Natty Dingle's store and from the
borings in the swamp brought me into trouble and conflict a few weeks
later. Not far from me lived a neighbor's boy, a budding naturalist,
who had a big yellow cat named Blink at his house. A queer old cat was
Blink, and the greatest hunter I ever saw. He knew, for instance,
where a mole could be found in his long tunnel,--and that is something
that still puzzles me,--and caught scores of them; but, like most
cats, he could never be induced to taste one. When he caught a mole
and was hungry, he would hide it and go off to catch a mouse or a
bird; and these he would eat, leaving the mole to be brought home as
game. He would hunt by himself for hours at a time, and come meowing
home, bringing everything he caught,--rats, squirrels, rabbits,
quail, grouse, and even grasshoppers when no bigger game was afoot. At
a distance we would hear his call, a peculiar _yeow-yow_ that he gave
only when he had caught something, and the boy would run out to meet
him and take his game, while Blink purred and rubbed against his legs
to show his pride and satisfaction. When no one met him he would go
meowing round the house once or twice and then put his game under the
door-step, where our noses must speedily call it to our attention, for
Blink would never touch it again.
One day the boy found a strange bird under the door-step, a beautiful
brown creature, as large as a pigeon, with a long, straight bill, and
eyes at the top of its head. He took it to his father, a dogmatic man,
who gave him a queer mixture of truth and nonsense as his portion of
natural history. It was a blind snipe, he said; and there was some
truth in that. It couldn't see because its eyes were out of place; it
was a very scarce bird that appeared occasionally in the fall, and
that burrowed in the mud for the winter instead of migrating,--and all
this was chiefly nonsense.
When the boy took me to see his queer find I called it a woodcock and
began to tell about it eagerly, but was stopped short and called a
liar for my pains. A wordy war followed, in which Natty Dingle's
authority was invoked in vain; and the boy, being bigger than I and in
his own yard, drove me away at last for daring to tell him about a
bird that his own cat had caught and that his own father had called a
blind snipe. He pegged one extra stone after me for saying that there
were plenty of them about, only they fed by night like owls, and
another stone for shouting back that they did not burrow in the mud
like turtles in dry weather, as his oracle had declared. And this
untempered zeal is very much like what one generally encounters when
he runs up against the prejudices of naturalists anywhere. Hear all
they say,--that the earth is flat, that swallows spend the winter in
the mud, that animals are governed wholly by instinct,--but don't
quote any facts you may have seen until the world is ready for them.
For it is better to call a thing a blind snipe, and know better, than
to raise a family row and be hit on the head with a stone for calling
it a woodcock.
The little woodcocks, though scarcely bigger than bumblebees, run
about hardily, like young partridges, the moment they chip the shell,
and begin at once to learn from the mother where to look for food. In
the early twilight, when they are less wild and the mother is not so
quick to flutter away and draw you after her, I have sometimes
surprised a brood of them,--wee, downy, invisible things, each with a
comically long bill and a stripe down his back that seems to divide
the little fellow and hide one half of him even after you have
discovered the other. The mother is with them, and leads them swiftly
among the bogs and ferns and alder stems, where they go about turning
over the dead leaves and twigs and shreds of wet bark with their bills
for the grubs that hide beneath, like a family of rag-pickers each
with a little stick to turn things over. Mother and chicks have a
contented little twitter at such times that I have never heard under
any other circumstances, which is probably intended to encourage each
other and keep all the family within hearing as they run about in the
twilight.
When the feeding-grounds are far away from the nest, as is often the
case, Whitooweek has two habits that are not found, I think, in any
other game birds--except perhaps the plover; and I have never been
able to watch the young of these birds, though every new observation
of the old ones serves to convince me that they are the most
remarkable birds that visit us, and the least understood. When food
must be hunted for at a long distance, the mother will leave her brood
in hiding and go herself to fetch it. When she returns she feeds the
chicks, like a mother dove, by putting her bill in their throats and
giving each his portion, going and coming until they are satisfied,
when she leaves them in hiding again and feeds for herself during the
rest of the night. Like most other young birds and animals when left
thus by their mothers, they never leave the spot where they have been
told to stay, and can hardly be driven away from it until the mother
returns. And generally, when you find a brood of young woodcock
without the mother, they will let you pick them up and will lie as if
dead in your hand, playing possum, until you put them down again.
When there is a good feeding-ground near at hand, yet too far for the
little chicks to travel, the mother will take them there, one by one,
and hide them in a secret spot until she has brought the whole family.
Two or three times I have seen woodcock fly away with their young; and
once I saw a mother return to the spot from which, a few moments
before, she had flown away with a chick and take another from under a
leaf where I had not seen him. This curious method is used by the
mothers not only to take the young to favorable feeding-grounds, but
also to get them quickly out of the way when sudden danger threatens,
like fire or flood, from which it is impossible to hide.
So far as I can judge the process, which is always quickly done and
extremely difficult to follow, the mother lights or walks directly
over the chick and holds him between her knees as she flies. This is
the way it seems to me after seeing it several times. There are
those--and they are hunters and keen observers--who claim that the
mother carries them in her bill, as a cat carries a kitten; but how
that is possible without choking the little fellows is to me
incomprehensible. The bill is not strong enough at the tip, I think,
to hold them by a wing; and to grasp them by the neck, as in a pair of
shears, and so to carry them, would, it seems to me, most certainly
suffocate or injure them in any prolonged flight; and that is not the
way in which wild mothers generally handle their little ones.
There is another possible way in which Whitooweek may carry her young,
though I have never seen it. An old hunter and keen observer of wild
life, with whom I sometimes roam the woods, once stumbled upon a
mother woodcock and her brood by a little brook at the foot of a wild
hillside. One of the chicks was resting upon the mother's back, just
as one often sees a domestic chicken. At my friend's sudden approach
the mother rose, taking the chick with her on her back, and vanished
among the thick leaves. The rest of the brood, three of them,
disappeared instantly; and the man, after finding one of them, went on
his way without waiting to see whether the mother returned for the
rest. I give the incident for what it is worth as a possible
suggestion as to the way in which young woodcock are carried to and
fro; but I am quite sure that those that have come under my own
observation were carried by an entirely different method.
[Illustration: "One of the chicks was resting upon the mother's back"]
The young woodcock begin to use their tiny wings within a few days of
leaving the eggs, earlier even than young quail, and fly in a
remarkably short time. They grow with astonishing rapidity, thanks to
their good feeding, so that often by early summer the family
scatters, each one to take care of himself, leaving the mother free to
raise another brood. At such times they travel widely in search of
favorite food and come often into the farm-yards, spending half the
night about the drains and stables while the house is still, and
vanishing quickly at the first alarm; so that Whitooweek is frequently
a regular visitor in places where he is never seen or suspected.
In his fondness for earthworms Whitooweek long ago learned some things
that a man goes all his life without discovering, namely, that it is
much easier and simpler to pick up worms than to dig for them. When a
boy has to dig bait, as the price of going fishing with his elders, he
will often spend half a day, in dry weather, working hard with very
small results; for the worms are deep in the earth at such times and
can be found only in favored places. Meanwhile the father, who has
sent his boy out to dig, will spend a pleasant hour after supper in
watering his green lawn. The worms begin to work their way up to the
surface at the first patter of water-drops, and by midnight are
crawling about the lawn by hundreds, big, firm-bodied fellows, just
right for trout fishing. They stay on the surface most of the night;
and that is why the early bird _catches_ the worm, instead of digging
him out, as the sleepy fellows must do. Midnight is the best time to
go out with your lantern and get all the bait you want without trouble
or worry. That is also the time when you are most likely to find
Whitooweek at the same occupation. Last summer I flushed two woodcock
from my neighbor's lawn in the late evening; and hardly a summer goes
by that you do not read with wonder of their being found within the
limits of a great city like New York, whither they have come from a
distance by night to hunt the rich lawns over. For the same fare of
earthworms they visit the gardens as well; and often in a locality
where no woodcock are supposed to exist you will find, under the
cabbage leaves, or in the cool shade of the thick corn-field, the
round holes where Whitooweek has been probing the soft earth for grubs
and worms while you slept.
When midsummer arrives a curious change comes over Whitooweek; the
slight family ties are broken, and the bird becomes a hermit indeed
for the rest of the year. He lives entirely alone, and not even in the
migrating season does he join with his fellows in any large numbers,
as most other birds do; and no one, so far as I know, has ever seen
anything that might be appropriately called a flock of woodcock. The
only exception to this rule that I know is when, on rare occasions,
you surprise a male woodcock strutting on a log, like a grouse,
spreading wings and tail, and hissing and sputtering queerly as he
moves up and down. Then, if you creep near, you will flush two or
three other birds that are watching beside the log, or in the
underbrush close at hand. One hunter told me recently that his setter
once pointed a bird on fallen log, that ceased his strutting as soon
as he was discovered and slipped down into the ferns. When the dog
drew nearer, five woodcock flushed at the same moment, the greatest
number that I have ever known being found together.
When I asked the unlearned hunter--who was yet wise in the ways of the
woods--the reason for Whitooweek's strutting at this season, after the
families have scattered, he had no theory or explanation. "Just a
queer streak, same's most birds have, on'y queerer," he said, and let
it go at that. I have seen the habit but once, and then imperfectly,
for I blundered upon two or three birds and flushed them before I
could watch the performance. It is certainly not to win his mate, for
the season for that is long past; and unless it be a suggestion of the
grouse habit of gathering in small bands for a kind of rude dance, I
am at a loss to account for it. Possibly play may appeal even to
Whitooweek, as it certainly appeals to all other birds; and it is play
alone that can make him forget he is a hermit.
With the beginning of the molt the birds desert the woods and swamps
where they were reared and disappear absolutely. Whither they go at
this time is a profound mystery. In places where there were a dozen
birds yesterday there are none to-day; and when you do stumble upon
one it is generally in a spot where you never found one before, and
where you will probably not find another, though you haunt the spot
for years. This is the more remarkable in view of the fact that the
woodcock, like most other birds, has certain favored spots to which he
returns, to nest or feed or sleep, year after year.
Occasionally at this season you may find a solitary bird on a dry
southern hillside, or on the sunny edge of the big woods. He is
pitiful now to behold, having scarcely any feathers left to cover him,
and can only flutter or run away at your approach. If you have the
rare fortune to surprise him now when he does not see you, you will
note a curious thing. He stands beside a stump or brake where the sun
can strike his bare back fairly, as if he were warming himself at
nature's fireplace. His long bill rests its tip on the ground, as if
it were a prop supporting his head. He is asleep; but if you crawl
near and bring your glasses to bear, you will find that he sleeps with
half an eye open. The lower lid seems to be raised till it covers half
the eye; but the upper half is clear, so that as he sleeps he can
watch above and behind for his enemies. He gives out very little scent
at such times, and your keen-nosed dog, that would wind him at a
stone's throw in the autumn, will now pass close by without noticing
him, and must almost run over the bird before he draws to a point or
shows any signs that game is near.
Hunters say that these scattered birds are those that have lost the
most feathers, and that they keep to the sunny open spots for the sake
of getting warm. Perhaps they are right; but one must still ask the
question, what do these same birds do at night when the air is colder
than by day? And, as if to contradict the theory, when you have found
one bird on a sunny open hillside, you will find the next one a mile
away asleep in the heart of a big corn-field, where the sun barely
touches him the whole day long.
Whatever the reason for their action, these birds that you discover in
July are rare, incomprehensible individuals. The bulk of the birds
disappear, and you cannot find them. Whether they scatter widely to
dense hiding-places and by sitting close escape discovery, or whether,
like some of the snipe, they make a short northern migration in the
molting season in search of solitude and a change of food, is yet to
be discovered. For it is astonishing how very little we know of a bird
that nests in our cow pasture and that often visits our yards and
lawns nightly, but whose acquaintance we make only when he is dead
and served as a delicious morsel, hot on toast, on our dining-tables.
In the spring, while winning his mate, Whitooweek has one habit which,
when seen at the edge of the alder patch, reminds you instantly of the
grass-plovers of the open moors and uplands, and of their wilder
namesakes of the Labrador barrens. Indeed, in his fondness for burned
plains, where he can hide in plain sight and catch no end of
grasshoppers and crickets without trouble to vary his diet, and in a
swift changeableness and fearlessness of man, Whitooweek has many
points in common with the almost unknown plovers. In the dusk of the
evening, as you steal along the edge of the woods, you will hear a
faint _peenk, peenk_ close beside you, and as you turn to listen and
locate the sound a woodcock slants swiftly up over your head and
begins to whirl in a spiral towards the heavens, clucking and
twittering ecstatically. It is a poor kind of song, not to be compared
with that of the oven-bird or grass-plover, who do the same thing at
twilight, and Whitooweek must help his voice by the clicking of his
wings and by the humming of air through them, like the sharp voice of
a reed in windy weather; but it sounds sweet enough, no doubt, to the
little brown mate who is standing perfectly still near you, watching
and listening to the performance. At an enormous height, for him,
Whitooweek whirls about madly for a few moments and then retraces his
spiral downwards, clucking and twittering the while, until he reaches
the tree-tops, where he folds his wings directly over his mate and
drops like a plummet at her head. Still she does not move, knowing
well what is coming, and when within a few feet of the ground
Whitooweek spreads his wings wide to break his fall and drops quietly
close beside her. There he remains quite still for a moment, as if
exhausted; but the next moment he is strutting about her, spreading
wings and tail like a wild turkey-gobbler, showing all his good points
to the best advantage, and vain of all his performances as a peacock
in the spring sunshine. Again he is quiet; a faint _peent, peent_
sounds, as if it were a mile away; and again Whitooweek slants up on
swift wings to repeat his ecstatic evolutions.
Both birds are strangely fearless of men at such times; and if you
keep still, or move very softly if you move at all, they pay no more
attention to you than if you were one of the cattle cropping the first
bits of grass close at hand. Like the golden plover, whose life is
spent mostly in the vast solitudes of Labrador and Patagonia, and
whose nature is a curious mixture of extreme wildness and dense
stupidity, they seem to have no instinctive fear of any large animal;
and whatever fear Whitooweek has learned is the result of persistent
hunting. Even in this he is slower learn than any other game bird, and
when let alone for a little season promptly returns to his native
confidence.
When the autumn comes you will notice another suggestion of the
unknown plover in Whitooweek. Just as you look confidently for the
plover's arrival in the first heavy northeaster after August 20, so
the first autumn moon that is obscured by heavy fog will surely bring
the woodcock back to his accustomed haunts again. But why he should
wait for a full moon, and then for a chill mist to cover it, before
beginning his southern flight is one of the mysteries. Unlike the
plovers that come by hundreds, and whose eerie cry, shrilling above
the roar of the storm and the rush of rain, brings you out of your bed
at midnight to thrill and listen and thrill again, Whitooweek slips in
silent and solitary; and you go out in the morning, as to an
appointment, and find him sleeping quietly just where you expected him
to be.
With the first autumn flight another curious habit comes out, namely,
that Whitooweek has a fondness for certain spots, not for any food or
protection they give him, but evidently from long association, as a
child loves certain unkempt corners of an upland pasture above twenty
other more beautiful spots that one would expect him to like better.
Moreover, the scattered birds, in some unknown way, seem to keep
account of the place, as if it were an inn, and so long as they remain
in the neighborhood will often keep this one particular spot filled to
its full complement.
Some three miles north of where I write there is a certain small patch
of tall open woods that a few hunters have known and tended for years,
while others passed by carelessly, for it is the least likely looking
spot for game in the whole region. Yet if there is but a single
woodcock in all Fairfield County, in these days of many hunters and
few birds, the chances are that he will be there; and if you do not
find one there on the first morning after a promising spell of
weather, you may be almost certain that the flight is not yet on, or
has passed you by. Several times after flushing a solitary woodcock
in this spot I have gone over the whole place to find some reason for
Whitooweek's strange fancy; but all in vain. The ground is open and
stony, with hardly a fern or root or grass tuft to shelter even a
woodcock; and look as closely as you will you can find no boring or
sign of Whitooweek's feeding. From all external appearances it is the
last spot where you would expect to find such a bird, and there are
excellent covers close at hand; yet here is where Whitooweek loves to
lie during the day, and to this spot he will return as long as there
are any woodcock left. Hunters may harry the spot to-day and kill the
few rare birds that still visit it; but to-morrow, if there be any
birds in the whole neighborhood, there will be practically the same
number just where the first were killed.
I have questioned old gunners about this spot,--which I discovered by
flushing two woodcock at a time when none were to be found, though
they were searched for by a score of young hunters and dogs,--and find
that it has been just so as long as they can remember. Years ago,
when the birds were plenty and little known, five or six might be
found here on a half-acre at any time during the flight. If these were
killed off, others took their places, and the supply seemed to be
almost a constant quantity as long as there were birds enough in the
surrounding coverts to draw upon; but why they haunt this spot more
than others, and why the vacant places are so quickly filled, are two
questions that no man can answer.
One hunter suggests to me, doubtfully, that possibly this may be
accounted for by the migrating birds that are moving southward during
the flight, and that drop into the best unoccupied places; and the
same explanation will occur to others. The objection to this is that
the birds migrate by night, and by night this spot is always
unoccupied. The woodcock use it for a resting-place only by day, and
by night they scatter widely to the feeding-grounds, whither also the
migrating birds first make their way; for Whitooweek must feed often,
his food being easily digested, and can probably make no sustained
flights. He seems to move southward by easy stages, feeding as he
goes; and so the new-comers would meet the birds that lately occupied
the spot on the feeding-grounds, if indeed they met them at all, and
from there would come with them at daylight to the resting-places they
had selected. But how do the new-comers, who come by night, learn that
the favored spots are already engaged by day, or that some of the
birds that occupied them yesterday are now dead and their places
vacant?
The only possible explanation is either to say that it is a matter of
chance--which is no explanation at all, and foolish also; for chance,
if indeed there be any such blind unreasonable thing in a reasonable
world, does not repeat itself regularly--or to say frankly that there
is some definite understanding and communication among the birds as
they flit to and fro in the night; which is probably true, but
obviously impossible to prove with our present limited knowledge.
[Illustration: "Once my old dog Don started a woodcock"]
This fondness for certain spots shows itself in another way when you
are on the trail of the hermit. When flushed from a favorite
resting-place and not shot at, he makes but a short flight, up to the
brush tops and back again, and then goes quietly back to the spot from
which he rose as soon as you are gone away. He has also the hare trick
of returning in a circle to his starting-point; and occasionally, when
you flush a bird and watch sharply, you may see him slant down on
silent wings behind you and light almost at your heels. Once my old
dog Don started a woodcock and remained stanchly pointing at the spot
where he had been. I remained where I was, a few yards in the rear,
and in a moment Whitooweek whirled in from behind and dropped silently
into some brakes between me and the dog and not ten feet from the old
setter's tail. The ruse succeeded perfectly, for as the scent faded
away from Don's nose he went forward, and so missed the bird that was
watching him close behind. This curious habit may be simply the result
of Whitooweek's fondness for certain places; or it may be that by
night he carefully selects the spot where he can rest and hide during
the day, and returns to it because he cannot find another so good
while the sun dazzles his eyes; or it may be a trick pure and simple
to deceive the animal that disturbs him, by lighting close behind
where neither dog nor man will ever think of looking for him.
By night, when he sees perfectly and moves about rapidly from one
feeding-ground to another, Whitooweek is easily dazzled by a light of
any kind, and he is one of the many creatures that come and go within
the circle of your jack. Because he is silent at such times, and moves
swiftly, he is generally unnamed--just a night bird, you think, and
let him pass without another thought. Several times when jacking, to
see what birds and animals I might surprise and watch by night, I have
recognized Whitooweek whirling wildly about my circle of light. Once,
deep in the New Brunswick wilderness, I surprised two poachers
spearing salmon at midnight with a fire-basket hung over the bow of
their canoe. Spite of its bad name it is a magnificent performance,
skillful and daring beyond measure; so instead of driving them off I
asked for a seat in their long dugout to see how it was done. As we
swept up and down the dangerous river, with pitch-pine blazing and
cracking and the black shadows jumping about us, two woodcock sprang
up from the shore and whirled madly around the pirogue. One brushed my
face with his wings, and was driven away only when Sandy in the bow
gave a mighty lunge of his spear and with a howl of exultation flung a
twenty-pound, kicking salmon back into my lap. But several times that
night I saw the flash of their wings, or heard their low surprised
twitter above the crackle of the fire and the rush and roar of the
rapids.
When he finds good feeding grounds on his southern migrations
Whitooweek will stay with us, if undisturbed, until a sharp frost
seals up his storehouse by making the ground too hard for his
sensitive bill to penetrate. Then he slips away southward to the next
open spring or alder run. Not far away, on Shippan Point, is a little
spring that rarely freezes and whose waters overflow and make a green
spot even in midwinter. The point is well covered with houses now, but
formerly it was good woodcock ground, and the little spring always
welcomed a few of the birds with the welcome that only a spring can
give. Last year, at Christmas time, I found a woodcock there quite at
home, within a stone's throw of two or three houses and with snow
lying deep all around him. He had lingered there weeks after all other
birds had gone, either held by old associations and memories of a time
when only the woodcock knew the place; or else, wounded and unable to
fly, he had sought out the one spot in all the region where he might
live and be fed until his wing should heal. Nature, whom men call
cruel, had cared for him tenderly, healing his wounds that man had
given, and giving him food and a safe refuge at a time when all other
feeding-grounds were held fast in the grip of winter; but men, who
can be kind and reasonable, saw no deep meaning in it all. The day
after I found him a hunter passed that way, and was proud of having
killed the very last woodcock of the season.