e of
the woodcock, which I had that very day startled upon this same
hillside. Now, then, for another sight of his famous aerial courtship
act! So, scrambling down the embankment, and clambering over the
stone-wall, I pushed up the hill through bushes and briers, till, having
come as near the bird as I dared, I crouched, and awaited further
developments. I had not long to wait, for after a few _yaks_, at
intervals of perhaps fifteen or twenty seconds, the fellow took to wing,
and went soaring in a circle above me; calling hurriedly _click, click,
click_, with a break now and then, as if for breath-taking. All this he
repeated several times; but unfortunately it was too dark for me to see
him, except as he crossed a narrow illuminated strip of sky just above
the horizon line. I judged that he mounted to a very considerable
height, and dropped invariably into the exact spot from which he had
started. For a week or two I listened every night for a repetition of
the yak; but I heard nothing more of it for a month. Then it came to my
ears again, this time from a field between the road and a swamp.
Watching my opportunity, while the bird was in the air, I hastened
across the field, and stationed myself against a small cedar. He was
still _clicking_ high overhead, but soon alighted silently within twenty
yards of where I was standing, and commenced to "bleat," prefacing each
_yak_ with a fainter syllable which I had never before been near enough
to detect. Presently he started once more on his skyward journey. Up he
went, in a large spiral, "higher still and higher" till the cedar cut
off my view for an instant, after which I could not again get my eye
upon him. Whether he saw me or not I cannot tell, but he dropped to the
ground some rods away, and did not make another ascension, although he
continued to call irregularly, and appeared to be walking about the
field. Perhaps by this time the fair one for whose benefit all this
parade was intended had come out of the swamp to meet and reward her
admirer.

Hoping for a repetition of the same programme on the following night, I
invited a friend from the city to witness it with me; one who, less
fortunate than the "forest seer," had never "heard the woodcock's
evening hymn," notwithstanding his knowledge of birds is a thousand-fold
more than mine, as all students of American ornithology would
unhesitatingly avouch were I to mention his name. We waited till dark;
but though _Philoh