On May 16, 1903, I flushed an old bird at upper end of the Eagle Woods. She left three young on the ground, they remaining very quiet, cuddled in the dead leaves. In a few minutes she returned and alighted by them took one _between her legs_, holding it tight up to her belly, and flew off into a thicket. I sat and watched the other two young for about 15 minutes, hoping and expecting the mother bird would return, but, she not doing so, I got tired and left. As the usual set of eggs is four, I wonder if the old bird carried off one when she first flushed. John T. Nichols tells, in his notes, of a brood found on Long Island: This brood was found early in the morning by working painstakingly in a narrow stand of trees where a nest was suspected. The parent bird rose from almost under foot and fluttered away, as is customary in such cases, with tail spread, pointing down, legs dangling wide apart. It was perhaps a minute before the eye could pick out four young lying motionless side by side, so inconspicuous was their color against the background. For another couple of minutes they lay motionless. Then of one accord rolled to their feet and spreading their baby wings aloft, as though to balance, walked deliberately away with fine, scarcely audible cheeping, each in a slightly different direction. Apparently reliable reports are current of the woodcock carrying its young, but the characteristic peculiar labored flight, with deflected tail and widespread legs, just described, may also easily give such an impression erroneously. Again he writes: Just after sunrise on a clear morning I came upon 3 birds in an open field. Two of them flew in different directions, one swiftly and silently quickly disappeared, the other in the peculiar fluttering manner characteristic of a parent when surprised with young. As I reached the point where the two had risen the presence of helpless young was confirmed by the actions of a bird on the ground some 75 yards away, at the edge of the trees to which the parent had flown. Its head up, watching me, both wings were extended to the side, flapping feebly. I had stood a couple of minutes scrutinizing the ground about, when my eye alighted on a fledgling. At the same instant it rose to its feet, raised and extended its wings to the side, and began to walk rapidly away, calling a high-pitched _seep_! Its wings were fully feathered, though little grown, feathers extending narrowly between them across the back, sides of its lower parts feathered, feathers not quite meeting in the center, otherwise in down. Contrast its helplessness with the young bobwhite which flies at a much earlier stage. Audubon (1840) describes the actions of the anxious mother in the following well-chosen words: