sixty when he first heard the woodcock sing on the wing.
The woodcock is one of the first arrivals in the springtime. You will hear his hoarse glad cry along the brookside, a note which is identical with the hoarse cry made by the nighthawk as he sails through the summer skies a few weeks later. If you have good eyes and you know what this cry prefaces, presently you will see Mr. Woodcock go sailing up into the spring sky. He zigzags up, as he is not a strong flyer.
When he is well up, he will fly about for a while, in perfect silence, then he will come zigzagging down, pivoting and wheeling, and pouring out his liquid song, which sounds like about a dozen canaries all singing at once.
There are many songs so simple and so characteristic that any one can tell them. Such songs as that of the cuckoo, which, when he is very busy eating tent-caterpillars, is shortened to simply the second syllable coo. The wild weird cry of the whippoorwill cannot be mistaken.
