. The oist . pth of severalinches. The snow had been partiallymelted by the sun, but froze hardduring the ensuing night. Two dayslater another snow storm occurred. 40 THE OOLOGIST The next morning found us on theground, which is an ideal locality forthe nesting of this bird. The groundwas then completely covered, withabout five ncbes of crusted snow. In company with our friends, weimmediately began the search for theWoodcock. We soon found the tracksof a pair where they had been feed-ing cr trying to find food around part-ly frozen water holes. We flushed thebirds and began looking the snow We
. The oist . pth of severalinches. The snow had been partiallymelted by the sun, but froze hardduring the ensuing night. Two dayslater another snow storm occurred. 40 THE OOLOGIST The next morning found us on theground, which is an ideal locality forthe nesting of this bird. The groundwas then completely covered, withabout five ncbes of crusted snow. In company with our friends, weimmediately began the search for theWoodcock. We soon found the tracksof a pair where they had been feed-ing cr trying to find food around part-ly frozen water holes. We flushed thebirds and began looking the snow We were beginning to think thatthe bird had used this place, in asmall clump of bushes as a refugefrom the snow storms, when it wassuggested that perhaps after all, thenest might be under the hard frozensnow. This was no sooner suggestedthan we were down on our knees, tak-ing turns at melting the snow withour breath. After a few minutes weweie rewarded by the sight of one egg,and ccntinuing our efforts we found. Woodcock on Nest covered ground ever carefully for thenest, but found none in that vicinity;but following the back tracks of asingle bird, which evidently weremade the previous day, we came to thespot almost a quarter of a mile dis-tant, where the bird had started onits walk to the water holes. On exam-ining the place nothing but a slightdepression was found appearing some-what dirtier than the otherwise cleansnow. a fine set cf four eggs, the first lyingdirectly in the middle and on top ofthe three ether eggs, and being sep-arated from them by a layer of atleast one inch of snow. From this Itake it that when the first snow stormcarre, the bird had laid three eggsand had found difficulty in keepingon them fcr any great length of Woodcock lives on worms fromthe soft marshy ground, and conse-quently could not remain a long time THE OOLOGIST 41 on the eggs; or possibly the largeamount of falling snow made the birdshift her position until by the con-stant moving the
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectbirds, bookyear1886
