Beautiful Plummage Of The Woodcock

Many years ago, when a boy in Massachusetts, I used to hear in a swampy thicket across the road from our house a strange note, a harsh rasping buzz. The time was always the dusk of the evening, in early spring. I knew the place well; it was grown up to high-bush blueberries, and hardhack, and alder, with here and there a young red maple rising above the general level. A small, wet-weather brook, emerging from the woods beyond, spread itself through the tangle, and here in spring the speckled tortoises worked their way rather aimlessly through its mazes, and the spring peepers sounded their thin pipes. But none of these, nor the salamanders, nor the trilling toads, could make such a sound as I had heard. What creature uttered it no one could tell.

Such a challenge interested me. So one evening, just after sunset, found me crouched in a clump of catkin-hung alders, determined to solve the mystery. The shadows deepened, the pink glow of the darkening west turned to indigo and violet. The chill of the April air grew t sharper and what little clothing there was between me and the marshy ground was quickly soaked. But soon, high in the air there rippled a song that drove all thoughts of cold and dampness from my mind. From some Stature flying in broad circles there filtered down a melody such as I had never before heard. Was it some ethereal bird whose mission it was to translate the pattering raindrops into musical notes and shower them down from cloudless skies to earthly mortals up to high-bush blueberries, below?

A series of soft whistling chirps, leisurely and rythmic dropped from the darkening blue heavens. The spiral that marked the path of the mysterious singer grew smaller and nearer and with this gradual change of flight the notes came ever slower and sweeter, and then ceased. There was a rush of wings and against the still-glowing west a longbilled bird flashed for the fraction of a second across my sight, and alighted a few feet away. Instantly from the damp thicket rang that harsh note that had first attracted me. The mystery was solved; the singer was a woodcock.

I had seen these famous birds, their beautiful plumage soiled and rumpled, in the game-bags of the gunners, but none had ever told me of its song. That memorable evening was the first of many spent in like fashion. Occasionally a combination of clearer sky and a bird whose eagerness led him to start his performance a minute or two earlier allowed a sight of the singer as he sped with rapidlybeating wings on his aerial circles. The lady bird for whom this program was executed lurked in the shadows when the singer rasped his harsh pipe, and rarely could I distinguish her. Many such a performance I attended, often witnessing a half-dozen acts before the darkness made longer waiting useless, and I groped mv way out of the swamp.

By: davidbunch

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