The ruff, a relative of the curlew, is remarkable for three reasons. In the first place, during the breeding-season, the male bird has a great frill or ruff of long feathers round his neck, which he can raise and lower at will. In the next place, two male ruffs are never colored alike, while sometimes they look so wholly different that it is quite hard to believe that they can really belong to the same species. And, in the third place, they are so dreadfully quarrelsome when the nesting-season begins, that two male ruffs can never meet without fighting. More than that, they actually have regular fighting-places, to which numbers of the birds resort when they want to settle their quarrels! But although they fight very savagely, they never seem to do each other much harm. Ruffs are hardly known in America, except in Alaska, but at one time they were very common in the marshy parts of England. THE WOODCOCK The woodcock is a bird of wooded swamps. It is valued by sportsmen, because difficult to shoot and delicate to eat. They lay their eggs in a hollow in the ground, which they line with dry grass and leaves. When the mother bird is sitting it is almost impossible to see her, for she nearly always nests among dead ferns, which are of exactly the same hues as her own plumage. Generally, indeed, it is her eyes that are noticed, and if she only had the sense to keep them shut she would probably never be detected at all. Woodcocks are hardly ever seen unless they are disturbed, for they hide during the daytime in thick bushes in woods, and only come out to feed in the evening. Their food consists chiefly of worms, which they pull out of soft, muddy ground by means of their long, slender beaks. If two male woodcocks meet during the nesting-season they almost always quarrel, and will fight nearly as savagely as ruffs. THE SNIPE In appearance and habits the snipe is something like the woodcock, but it is considerably smaller, and is found in damp, marshy ground instead of in woods. When it is flushed it flies away for a few yards quite straight, and then begins to twist and turn about in a most extraordinary way, changing the direction of its flight at almost every yard. In consequence of this habit it is not at all an easy bird to shoot. The male snipe is very fond of rising to a great height in the air, and there uttering his curious cry of "chick! chick! chick-a!" over and over again. At the same time he also makes a strange drumming sound, which seems to be caused in some way by the motion of the wings, as it is only produced while he is "stooping" down toward the ground. The snipe generally nests in the middle of a tussock of coarse grass or rushes, where it lays four buff or olive-green eggs marked with dark-brown blotches. THE HERON