_Breeding range._--Northern Europe and Asia. North in Scandinavia to latitude 67°, in Lapland and Finland, in western Russia to 65°, and in eastern Russia to 64°. East to the Sea of Okhotsk. West to the British Isles. South to the Azores, Canaries, and Madeira (where it is resident), the Pyrenees, Alps, Transylvania, Carpathians, Himalayas (up to 10,000 feet), Mongolia, and Japan. _Winter range._--Great Britain, the Mediterranean basin, northern Africa and southern Asia, Persia, India, Burma, China, Japan, and occasionally Ceylon. _Casual records._--Casual in the Faeroes, Spitsbergen, Greenland, and North America. Prof. Wells W. Cooke (1912) says: It wanders occasionally to eastern North America, and has occurred in Loudoun County, Va., in 1873 (Coues); Chester County, Pa., the end of November, 1886 (Stone); one was taken near Shrewsbury, N. J., December 6, 1859 (Lawrence); one, September, 1889, somewhere in New Jersey (Warren); one, probably of this species, near Newport, R. I. (Baird, Brewer, and Ridgway); one at Chambly, Quebec, November 11, 1882 (Wintle); and one at St. John, Newfoundland, January 9, 1862 (Sclater). _Egg dates._--Great Britain: 29 records, March 9 to August 5; 15 records, April 18 to June 22. RUBICOLA MINOR (Gmelin) AMERICAN WOODCOCK HABITS This mysterious hermit of the alders, this recluse of the boggy thickets, this wood nymph of crepuscular habits is a common bird and well distributed in our Eastern States, widely known, but not intimately known. Its quiet retiring habits do not lead to human intimacy. It may live almost in our midst unnoticed. Its needs are modest, its habitat is circumscribed, and it clings with tenacity to its favorite haunts even when closely encroached upon by civilization. The banks of a stream running through my place, close to the heart of the city, were once famous woodcock covers in which the birds persisted long after the surroundings were built up; and even within recent years I have had a pair of woodcocks living in the shrubbery along the stream for a week or two at a time.