Wood Wanderings

by Winthrop Packard

As it was in the vegetable world, so it has been with animal life, and particularly with those birds which nest on the ground. The mother bird may conceal her nest so carefully that neither skunk nor fox nor predatory boys can find it. She cannot conceal it from the rapidly-rising water of a June flood which will drown her nestlings or so chill her eggs that they will fail to hatch. A long heavy rain at just about hatching time may almost wipe out the young birds of a season among certain varieties. I read recently a report from Maine stating that the partridges are particularly plentiful in that State this year. This, the report went on to say, was because the hedgehog bounty of some years ago had made a scarcity of hedgehogs. Therefore, as the hedgehogs no longer ate the partridge eggs, partridges were increasing in number.

The State of Maine porcupine, commonly called hedgehog, though purists decry the custom, will eat the handle off your canoe paddle, the floor off your camp, or the boots off your feet. I dare say he eats partridge eggs when in his short-sighted, clumsy wanderings he happens to find them, but I doubt if he does enough of this to make him responsible for a shortage in the partridge crop. I believe the partridges are particularly plentiful Down East this year because there was never a cloud in the sky nor a drenching rain from the time the eggs were laid until the young birds were fully fledged. I know that is what happened here in Massachusetts and, as a consequence, the young of ground-nesting birds have had more than their usual opportunity to grow up.

This is true of partridges, and the application is apt, for the partridge is not a migrating bird, nor even a wanderer. He clings to the particular section of woodland where he was brought up with a faithfulness which is apt to prevent his reaching a green old age. You may drive him from his covert with all the racket you are able to make. He may leave with vigor and directness that would seem to prove that he has through tickets for Seattle. Yet, if you sit quietly by in a position which commands a good view of the approaches, you will before long see the flip of a brown wing that is bearing him back again. He has gone no farther than the dense shelter of a neighboring pine grove, whence he watches out until he thinks it safe to come home.

I take it that the same reason holds good for the plentifulness of woodcock this fall in certain swamps which I frequent. You may know that woodcock are plentiful in a place, even if you do not see them, by the numbers of little round holes in moist, soft ground, usually where the swamp begins to give way to sandy upland. Here the bird goes jabbing for angleworms, which are his chief diet. I have never been able to catch them at it, though I have often noticed the borings in the spot whence I have just flushed the bird. In fact, I have never seen a live woodcock on the ground anyway.

The bird is so built that I and other predatory creatures will not be able to do it. His coloring is well adapted to blend with the dusky-browns and black of the low ground which he frequents. He does not have to look for his food. He feels for it. Given the proper piece of ground to contain angleworms, he has but to probe with that long, sensitive bill and haul them out when the sense of touch tells him that one is there. For

He does not have to look for his food

this purpose the end of the upper mandible is somewhat flexible and moves so as to nip the worm when he feels it.

If we could see him thus engaged I think we would understand clearly why a woodcock is so peculiarly built. His eyes are set so far back in his head that the bird has a grotesque appearance. But in this very fact lies a large factor of his safety. Wild animals that hunt woodcock may not slip up on them unseen while they are feeding. The woodcock’s nose may be in the mud, but his eyes, set absurdly far back on his head, are then just right for seeing all that is going on. Let there be but the slightest hint of danger near by and the bird goes straight up in the air in a tremendous burst of speed.