Page:Birdlifeguide00chap.djvu/173

 WOODCOCK. 95 It rarely breeds on the Atlantic coast, but is some- times common on our marsh -bordered streams in the fall. SHORE BIRDS. (OBDEB, LIMICOL^.) Snipes and Sandpipers. (Family Scolopacid^.) The successful pursuit of shore birds on our coasts requires a special knowledge of their notes and habits. Thirty of the one hundred known species visit us annu- ally, but of this number only two or three nest, most of the others migrating in May to their breeding grounds in the far North. The return migration takes place during July, August, and Septemljer, but with some exceptions these birds are seen only by those who hunt them sys- tematically with decoys. Only these exceptions and our summer resident species ^vill be mentioned here. Commonest among the latter Woodcock ^^ *^^® Woodcock, a bird so unlike other Phiioheia minor. Snipe in his choice of haunts that he Figs. 9 and 19. seems quite out of place in this family. Nor is he, strictly speaking, a summer resident, for there are only three months in the year when the Woodcock is not with us. He comes in March as soon as the frost- bound earth will permit him to probe for his diet of worms, and he remains until some December freeze drives him southward. Low, wet woods, where skunk cabbage and hellebore thrive, or bush-grown, springy runs, are the Woodcock's early haunts. In August, while molting, he often visits cornfields in the bottom lands, and in the fall wooded hillsides are his resorts. But, wherever he is, the Wood- cock leav^es his mark in the form of "borings" — little holes which dot the earth in clusters, and show where the bird