The usual nesting sites are in alder runs, swampy thickets, brushy corners in pastures, or in underbrush or tall weeds along the edges of woods. Woodcocks are early breeders and it sometimes happens that nests are buried under late falls of snow; in such cases the birds continue to sit as long as it is possible to do so. The nest is often placed at the foot of a small tree or bush, occasionally beside a log or stump or even under fallen brush. An abundance of fallen leaves seems to be an essential requirement, of which the nest is usually made and among which the bird relies on its protective coloration for concealment; but its big black eyes sometimes reveal it.
L. Whitney Watkins (1894) found a nest near Manchester, Michigan, in heavy timber, and within a few feet of a reed-bordered, springy spot, it was within 2 feet of an ovenbird's nest. Another nest he describes as follows:
The old bird, curiously enough, had selected for her nesting site an open spot where some fallen boughs had partially decayed, and within 5 feet of a picket fence enclosing an open pasture field. Opposite her on the other side, were ash, elm, oak, and other trees, of no considerable size, and round about were many frost-dried stems of aster and goldenrod, interspersed with the fallen leaves of the previous summer. Little of green was near.
E. G. Taber (1904) found a nest that was situated in a swampy corner of a field planted with corn, only 6 feet from the open, on a slightly raised portion of the ground. This corner was overgrown with black ash, soft maple, tag alders, and ferns, mingled with poison ivy. Mr. Brewster (1925) describes two, of several, nests found near Umbagog Lake, Maine, as follows:
One, containing four eggs, incubated perhaps as many days, was in the face of a low mound partially overarched by balsam shrubs surrounded on every side by pools of water, and some 80 yards from the lake shore near the middle of swampy, second-growth woods made up chiefly of aspen, red cherry, and yellow birch trees, 20 or 30 feet in height, beneath which grew alders rather abundantly. The female woodcock flew up from her eggs at least 15 feet in advance of me, and whistling faintly soared off over the tree tops to be seen no more. I flushed a male about 50 yards from this nest.
Of the other he says:
It was at the edge of a little fern-grown opening, on a mound covered with brakes flattened and bleached by winter snows, beneath a balsam scarce 2 feet high, and not dense enough to afford much concealment for the eggs which, indeed, caught my eye when I was 15 feet away, there being no bird on them.
Mr. Trostler (1893) writes:
Finding a nest one day, I disturbed the setting bird three times, and again four times on the next day, and on the morning of the third day I found that the birds had removed the eggs during the night and placed them in a new nest about 8 feet away, where I found the eggs. I had marked the eggs to avoid any mistake. The second nest was a mere hollow in the mossy ground, and was in the middle of an open place in tall marsh grass, while the first was neatly cupped and lined with the above-mentioned vegetable down.