Who knows where to look for woodcocks? Their haunts are so varied that one may not be surprised to find them almost anywhere, especially on migrations. Flight birds are here to-day and gone to-morrow. Their favorite resorts are alder thickets along the banks of meandering streams or spring-fed boggy runs; rich bottom lands or scrubby hollows, overgrown with willows, maples, alders, and poison sumac; or the scrubby edges of damp, second-growth woods, mixed with birches; any such place will suit them where they can find moist soil, not too wet or too sour, well supplied with earthworms. During the hot, sultry weather of July and August, the molting season, they seek the seclusion of cool, moist, leafy woods or dense thickets; or they may resort to the cool hillside or mountain bogs, fed by cool springs; or, if the weather is very dry, they may be found in the wet grassy meadows. Woodcocks do not like too much water and, after heavy rains, they may be driven from their usual covers to well-drained hillsides, sparsely covered with small birches, maples, locusts, and cedars. Sometimes they are found on the tops of mountains; George B. Sennett (1887) saw a pair on the top of Roan Mountain in North Carolina, at an elevation of 6,000 feet, "in a clump of balsams; the overflow from numerous springs which had their sources at this spot formed an open, adjoining marsh of several acres." Woodcocks often appear in unexpected places, such as city parks, yards, gardens, orchards, or even lawns. John T. Nichols writes to me: A neighbor (Mr. W. S. Dana) called for me at about 10 o'clock in the morning of a sparklingly clear, rather cool summer's day, to show me a woodcock that was feeding on his lawn, which slopes down to an almost fresh water arm of Moriches Bay. We found the bird still busily engaged where he had left it. It was out in the bright sunlight, crouched, walking about slowly but continuously. It held its body in an unsteady wavering manner, and was picking and digging about the roots of the short grass stubble, apparently obtaining some food too small for us to determine. The piece of lawn where the bird was operating was low and flat, adjacent to the edge of the water where protected by a low bulkhead. The ground was slightly moist, perhaps from seepage, which may have accounted for its presence. It was remarkably unsuspicious, allowing us to crawl within 2 or 3 yards, before flying back to alight under the shade of near-by trees; but was a full-grown bird, strong on the wing. I have, more than once, seen a woodcock crouching in the short grass beside a country road, quite unconcerned as I drove past. I have frequently seen one in my yard about the shrubbery and I remember seeing my father stand on his front piazza and shoot one that was standing under an arborvitae hedge. Moist cornfields are often favorite resorts for woodcocks in summer.