Scolopax minor
Order Charadriiformes
Family Scolopacidae
Subfamily Scolopacinae
Adult.— Back of head black, barred with rusty yellow; rest of upper parts grayish-brown, mixed with black; dark line from the eye to the bill; under parts buffy, tinged especially on the flanks with cinnamon; tail black, tipped with white; eye large.
Nest, on the ground.
Eggs, buffy, spotted with reddish-brown and purplish-gray.
The Woodcock is a summer resident of New York and New England, formerly common, but now becoming rare. It arrives early in March, and stays till November. It feeds in low swampy woodland, where it bores for worms in the soft mud. In the fall it is often flushed from rather dry woodland. When it rises, it almost always makes a whistling sound, presumably with its wings.
In March and April the males execute their interesting flight-song. From the low ground near some rocky pasture, as dusk approaches, a harsh peent is heard, like a Nighthawk‘s cry. This is repeated a number of times, and then from the sky overhead there issues a series of whistling sounds, interspersed with liquid notes like the syllables whit, whit, whit. Then the peents begin again from the ground. If an observer conceals himself near the open space where the harsh peent is now heard, he will see the bird come shooting down at the end of the flight and will see it on the ground, facing now in one direction, and now in another, as it utters the peents. If near enough, he will also hear a curious p’tul, sometimes repeated several times in the intervals between the harsh cries. The bird rises a number of times, repeating the performance till it grows quite dark; then all is silent. If the same spot is visited before dawn, the performance may be witnessed to still greater advantage, as it will grow steadily lighter instead of darker.
When a woodcock is flushed in the daytime, the long bill and the short black tail are excellent field-marks. The Snipe is the only bird likely to be mistaken for it, but the woodcock is nearly always found in the cover of tree or bushes, while the snipe lies in open marshy ground or meadows.
Hoffmann – A Guide to the Birds of New England and Eastern New York (1904)