The Ways Of The Woodcock

The woodcock lays its eggs, almost always four in number, in a hollowed place in last year's blanket of leaves. Though they seem large for the size of the bird, they are so cunningly marked with buff and brown that the closest scrutiny often fails to reveal them on their leaf bed. In Louisiana and Florida, the southern limit, the bird may lay in January or even December. Farther north the date is sucessively later, and in the northernmot haunts it may be late May before the season is deemed suitable. For three weeks the patient mother guards them from cold and storm, and not infrequently they are buried by an early snowfall.

Undoubtedly the male bird assists her in the incubation; else the mother would have no chance to feed. When the eggs hatch she leads her tiny buff and black-spotted babies away almost at once, and the discarded shells may usually be found in the abandoned nest. If danger threatens she attempts, usually with success, to decoy the enemy from the spot, and often carries one or more of her defenseless babies out of the danger zone. This habit has been noted many times by reliable observers, both in the case of the old-world woodcock and our own species, and is accomplished in several ways. In the only instance personally observed the young bird apparently was held between the highs of the mother, but others have seen the young grasped by the feet of the old one and thus carried to safety.

I am not aware that the food of young woodcocks has ever been studied, but it is almost certainly the same as that of the adult. Earthworms constitute the principal form of the diet, though various insects found beneath the bodies are also eaten. Captive woodcocks have been known to devour twice their weight in earthworms each day, and their demands for food usually led to their liberation. On at least one occasion young bird raised in semi-captivity became so tame that they wouldl fly up and alight on the shoulders of their owner.

This, then is one of the birds that some writers would have us believe carry no aesthetic charm. This lovely creature, that sings to its mate from the air, that guards so closely its eggs that one may take it in hand, that carries its helpless young to safety when danger threatens, has no value, we are told, save that which may be measured by the joy attending its pursuit, and the succulence of its flesh, merely because it has been designed as a game bird.

And for the present gratification of pursuit, the gunners seem willing to destroy the bird forever.

By: davidbunch

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